Botnets Will Continue to Flourish in 2007

A major threat to be confronted in the cyber world today is that of botnets. They have played a vital role in cyber crime and investigators have been trying to find ways to ward off incursions that involve zombie systems. Microsoft believes that the situation will deteriorate before any improvement can be seen.

In the world of cyber security, a botnet is a collection of infected PCs hosting harmful software that is under the remote control of a "bot herder". Such networks are responsible for a number of different kinds of cyber crimes such as spam, phishing, click fraud, trojans, and worms. A new botnet worm, termed "Big Yellow", checked networks for systems operating Symantec Client Security or Symantec antivirus Corporate Edition and then took advantage of a security flaw in the software in order to take over a PC.

Aaron Kornblum, a senior lawyer in Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement group, said that they were dedicated cyber criminals who exploited the focused power of botnets. This leverage could be utilized for a range of malevolent actions on the Internet.

Phishing scams, particularly, have mushroomed in spite of the security measures built into the majority of popular browsers. Previously, phishing hoaxes were aimed at big financial organizations but the attention has steadily moved away in the last two years. Kornblum said that phishing was concentrated more on intermediate and smaller financial companies such as credit unions and community banks frauds, and targeting less the top banking giants like Citibank. The comparatively less efforts on the part of the former toward consumer education play a part in this development.

At the moment it is unlikely that the problem of botnets will disappear quickly. In the first half of 2006 Symantec counted a total of 4.5 million botnets on the Internet, while McAfee says that botnets have infected 12 million PCs across the globe. Botnets now constitute 22 percent of all malware, as compared with a figure of 19 percent in 2004.

Despite the numerous solutions being put out by security dealers and browser manufacturers, these zombies will not perish. It is really difficult to anticipate an end to this menace.

Related article: Botnet Misuses Google Analytics

» SPAMfighter News - 1/3/2007