botnets

The monarchy comes to Twitter, but of course the Queen doesn't sully her fingers on the keyboard, she has a royal twitterer do that. We also discuss whether the new Universal Music Group deal with TuneCore will change the landscape of music. We also absolve North Korea of the botnet.

Universal/TuneCore deal opens major doors for indie artists http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/07/universaltunecore-deal-opens-major-doors-for-indie-artists.ars http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10283224-27.html

Korean DDoS Bots To Self-Destruct http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/07/10/0452256/Korean-DDoS-Bots-To-Self-Destruct … Read more

Spam made up 90.4 percent of all e-mail traffic in June, with botnets accounting for the vast majority of those unsolicited messages, according to a new report from Symantec's MessageLabs.

Spam sent out from botnets, or networks of zombie PCs, made up 83.2 percent of unsolicited e-mail messages this month, MessageLabs said Tuesday in a statement. In May, 57.6 percent of spam was sent from known botnets, with Donbot responsible for 18.2 percent of these messages.

According to the messaging security company, the biggest botnet currently is Cutwail, which has doubled in size and output … Read more

Researchers at security firm Finjan said on Wednesday that they have uncovered an underground botnet-leasing network where cyber criminals can pay $5 to $100 to install malware on 1,000 PCs for things like stealing data and sending spam.

The Golden Cash network, dubbed "Your money-making machine" on its home page, sells access to botnets comprised of thousands of compromised PCs to cyber criminals for custom malware spreading jobs, according to issue 2 of the Cybercrime Intelligence Report for 2009.

Here's how it works: a cyber criminal creates a botnet by hiding malicious code in a legitimate … Read more

Experts have warned of serious security flaws in the Chinese government's censorship software, which could open the door to hackers creating huge botnets.

Programming errors in the Green Dam Youth Escort software, which the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said Tuesday must be preinstalled on all new computers in the country, are at the root of the flaws, according to experts from the University of Michigan.

"Once Green Dam is installed, any website the user visits can exploit these problems to take control of the computer," wrote the university's researchers. "This could allow … Read more

The abstract concepts of "botnet" and "Trojan" just became a lot more concrete for me.

In less than an hour on Thursday, I was able to use programs readily available on the Internet underground for as little as $300 to infect several Windows clients and take complete control of them in a test environment.

In contrast to the real world, the McAfee Malware Experience event, which was akin to a Malware 101 class (or, in my case, Malware for Dummies), served up printed step-by-step instructions for us nonhacker journalists. But McAfee researchers said the programs used--real … Read more

It's been almost a week since the Federal Trade Commission had the allegedly rogue Pricewert ISP shut down, and it seems like the Internet has indeed been a safer, or I should say slightly less dangerous, place.

The FTC charged that Pricewert's distribution of illegal, malicious, and harmful content and deployment of botnets that compromised thousands of computers caused substantial consumer injury and was an unfair practice, in violation of federal law.

According to Symantec, the Cutwail botnet--one of the most notorious botnets, accounting for up to 35 percent of all spam in May across the globe--experienced a … Read more

The Internet might just have gotten a little safer.

The Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday that it had Pricewert shut down by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division.

Pricewert is a San Jose, Calif.-based Internet service provider that allegedly recruits, intentionally and actively participates in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and other harmful electronic content.

Generally, the commission files a complaint when it has "reason to believe" that the law has been or is being violated, and it appears to the Commission that a proceeding is in the … Read more

Cybercrime fighter Eugene Kaspersky can't help but be impressed by the slick operations behind the Conficker botnet, and says that it could have been worse had the botnet been after more than just money.

"They are high-end engineers who write code in a good way," Kaspersky told ZDNet.com.au Wednesday. "They use cryptographic systems in the right way, they don't make mistakes--they are really professional."

Kaspersky says he's "60 percent certain" that Conficker is being controlled from the Ukraine, but can't be certain. And while the threat posed by … Read more

A pirated version of Windows 7 Release Candidate infected with a Trojan horse has created a botnet with tens of thousands of bots under its control, according to researchers at security firm Damballa.

The software, which first appeared on April 24, spread as quickly as several hundred new bots per hour, and controlled roughly 27,000 bots by the time Damballa took over the network's command and control server on May 10, the firm said Tuesday.

The pirated software was spread via popular piracy sites and online forums, Damballa said.

The software is primarily designed to download and install … Read more