Tag: BOTNET

Krebs on Security is reporting that a huge drop in the volume of e-mail spam circulating worldwide on Wednesday was the result of a planned takedown of the Rustock botnet, which, at one point, was the most prolific purveyor of spam in the entire world. According to the Composite Spam Blocklist (CBL), which measures global spam volumes, Rustock spam (usually ads for online pharmacies and male ...

Hey, here's some good news: it looks like spam is on the decline. According to Symantec's latest State of Spam and Phishing report, the volume of spam and junk mail in circulation around the world has been decreasing steadily since August, and dropped noticeably around Christmas. No one has a concrete explanation for the drop-off, but Symantec's Eric Park suggests that the demise of major botnets ...

Share Over the holidays, several government employees and contractors received a Christmas e-card that purported to be from The White House, but actually contained document-swiping malware. According to Krebs on Security, when a recipient opened the file, or clicked on either of the included links, a trojan stole PDF, Word and Excel documents, and then uploaded them to a server in Belarus. ...

Share German researchers have discovered a brand new vulnerability in basic cell phones, which, if exploited properly, could easily cripple mobile networks on a scarily large scale. Researchers Collin Mulliner and Nico Golde introduced the bug at the recent Chaos Computer Club Congress in Berlin. The pair reportedly discovered it after setting up their own private GSM network, which allowed ...

Researchers have created their own botnet and unleashed it on 98 servers running 3,000 copies of Windows XP to better understand how they operate. The team from ESET and Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal needed to keep the Waledac botnet from infecting other computers, and took a cue from 'Battlestar Galactica.' They physically disconnected the servers from the Ecole Polytechnique's network, and ...

Federal investigators are currently pursuing a 23-year-old Russian man accused of orchestrating the so-called 'Mega-D' botnet that, at one point, had the capacity to send 10 billion spam e-mails per day. The network of 500,000 infected computers was taken down late last year, but one researcher quoted by the FBI said that Mega-D, at the height of its powers, "was likely the largest botnet in the ...

The U.S. may not be the superpower it once was, but, when it comes to botnets, at least, we're still number one. According to Microsoft's newly released ninth Security Intelligence Report, more than 2.2 million computers in the U.S. fell prey to botnets in the first six months of 2010, substantially more than second-ranked Brazil, home to 550,000 infected computers. South Korea, however, has the ...

If you've received any suspicious-looking e-mails from LinkedIn recently, you may have been targeted by the latest Trojan attack to hit inboxes. The malicious e-mails, which targeted billions of Windows users yesterday, seemed like normal LinkedIn invitations from random contacts. And, like most LinkedIn invites, the messages asked users to click a link to confirm the request. Instead of sending ...

Share Yesterday afternoon, a massive virus hit e-mail accounts across the world, including those at major corporations like ABC/Disney, Google, Coca-Cola and NASA. According to ABC News, the trojan virus spread through e-mails with subject lines that read 'Here You Have,' while other versions of the worm were hidden under subject lines like 'This is The Free Dowload Sex Movies,you can find it ...

With easier access and cheaper automated software, anybody with a few bucks and a computer can become a hacker these days. According to Information Week, a study by security intelligence service iDefense found that botnets can be rented for less than $70 a day, or less than $10 an hour. In a study of 25 illegal botnet offerings, the firm found that not only is this malicious software relatively ...

Just over a week ago, researchers demonstrated the PDF vulnerability that turns a so-called "feature" into a back door, through which criminal minds could infect a user's PC. Now, hackers have released an attack that takes advantage of said "feature." The widespread Zeus botnet has been updated and packaged in PDF form, and is now landing in e-mail inboxes around the world. Security firm M86 ...

As if phishing scams and identity thefts didn't already make the Internet unappetizing, hackers are apparently getting still more industrious in ways that leave us feeling queasy. According to The New Scientist, we now have to worry about "a burgeoning cyber-crime industry, one which lets people with next to no programming skills steal a fortune in cash or get hold of sensitive government ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... The Mariposa botnet originated in Spain in 2008, and subsequently spread to corrupt over 12 million PCs in almost 200 countries. Among those were consoles used in hundreds of Fortune 500 companies and more than 40 major banks. Spanish authorities have now arrested the three primary suspects behind the operation, which relied ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... AdMob recently surveyed almost 1,000 smartphone owners in order to glean information pertaining to age, gender and brand choice. Despite Verizon's attempts to blatantly, and offensively, pander to women, the study's data indicates that men still make up the majority of webOS owners. Apple's gadgets successfully crossed the gender ...

What's more annoying than Chuck Norris? We're hard pressed to think of much, but, if we really thought about it, a modem-hacking botnet named after the actor/Internet sensation would probably fit the bill. According to PC World, Czech researchers recently discovered a botnet (a network of infected devices that work together to send spam and steal data) that hijacks routers and DSL modems. To do ...