Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost?
,----[ Quote ]
| It's dress-down Friday at Sunbelt Software's Clearwater, Fla.,
| headquarters. In a bland cubicle on the 12th floor, Eric Sites
| stares at the screen of a "dirty box," a Microsoft Windows
| machine infected with the self-replicating Wootbot network worm.
|
| [...]
|
| Botnets filled---and easily replenished---with compromised
| Windows have emerged as the key hub for well-organized crime
| rings around the globe, using stolen bandwidth from drone
| zombies to make money from nefarious Internet activity,
| according to security experts tracking the threat.
|
| [...]
|
| Statistics from multiple sources justify Evron's pessimism.
| According to data culled from Microsoft's MSRT (Malicious
| Software Removal Tool), back-door Trojans and bots represent
| a "significant and tangible threat to Windows users."
|
| Since the first iteration of the MSRT in January 2005, the
| tool has removed at least one Trojan from about 3.5 million
| unique computers. Of the 5.7 million infected Windows
| machines, about 62 percent was found with a Trojan or bot.
|
| [...]
|
| During the attack, which exploited a Windows Server Service
| vulnerability, security researchers at the German Honey-net
| Project discovered that hijacked PCs were being used to
| install ad-serving software from DollarRevenue, a company
| that pays between a penny and 30 cents per installation.
|
| Within 24 hours, the IRC-controlled botnet seized control of
| more than 7,700 machines. During a four-day stretch, the
| researchers counted about 9,700 infections from a single
| command-and-control center and calculated that the attacker
| earned about $430 in commissions from DollarRevenue alone.
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http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2029720,00.asp
I think I have seen this article before, but the date is current.
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