Boom times for hi-tech criminals
,----[ Quote ]
| Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing said
| the tool of choice for many hi-tech criminals was the botnet - a collection
| of hijacked home PCs.
|
| "Botnets are now a well-organised tool," he said. "They are at a point now
| where they are creating smaller botnets from larger ones."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7154187.stm
Q&A: McAfee, Symantec CEOs talk security
,----[ Quote ]
| John Thompson, Symantec: The reality is that we have had great insight about
| what information was flowing around in an organization for years. The fact
| that we were doing virus protection was interesting, but what was more
| interesting was depth and breadth of intelligence network around the world,
| which has been telling us about where viruses and worms are coming from, what
| hacker attacks are occurring, where spam is originating from, and what
| keywords people are using to bypass filters.
`----
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/02/security-ceo-point-counterpoint_1.html
So, let hundreds of millions of zombies spew v14gra SPAM and call it acceptable
just because you can filter that? The problem is Windows being compromised so
easily, not E-mail filters that are bombarded by 10,000,000,000 messages per
day (plus attachments).
Related:
Microsoft is the world's biggest cause of zombie remailers
,----[ Quote ]
| In China, it would take about one and one-half years wages (for the
| average Chinese) to buy a legitimate copy of Windows Vista. If you
| could find it here.
|
| Microsoft is the biggest cause of zombie remailers in the world,
| because they make noises, but do not do anything to address the
| real digital inequities in the world.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38202
In zombies we trust
,----[ Quote ]
| A little over a year ago, I wrote an editorial where in back-of-the-envelope
| style (.pdf) I estimated that perhaps 15-30% of all privately owned computers
| were no longer under the sole control of their owner. In the intervening
| months, I received a certain amount of hate mail but in those intervening
| months Vint Cert guessed 20-40%, Microsoft said 2/3rds, and IDC suggested
| 3/4ths. It is thus a conservative risk position to assume that any random
| counterparty stands a fair chance of being already compromised.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=661
Over 50% of corporate desktops infected with malware: IronPort
,----[ Quote ]
| The report also reveals that more than 50% of corporate desktops
| worldwide are infected with some type of spyware with the rate of
| infection as high as 70% in the United States. Trojans or malicious
| system monitors represented over 7% of the infections. Rootkits and
| trick loaders, which reinstall spyware and other obfuscation techniques,
| make remediation very difficult thus prevention is the key to stopping
| these threats.
`----
http://www.crn-india.com/breakingnews/stories/66870.html
Botnet 'pandemic' threatens to strangle the net
,----[ Quote ]
| Cerf estimated that between 100 million and 150 million of the
| 600 million PCs on the internet are under the control of hackers,
| the BBC reports.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/26/botnet_threat/
What Is A Botnet?
,----[ Quote ]
| Usually, the zombies in use of a botnet are compromised computers running the
| Microsoft Windows operating system that have been infected with some sort of
| malware.
`----
http://www.yoursdaily.com/science_tech/what_is_a_botnet
|
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