US Computers Most Infected with Rimecud Botnet

According to Microsoft, which recently published its Security Intelligence Report, the United States hosts the world's largest number of zombies (about 2.2m) i.e. computers infected with bots, while Rimecud Botnet is the greatest contaminator for the country's PCs.

Brazil, which's on No.2 position, hosts 550,000 bots while Spain, on No.3, hosts 382,000 bots.

Elaborating on Rimecud, the security researchers state that it works like a backdoor virus, which proliferates through removable and fixed drives as well as via dispatching harmful web-links to all the friends of the victim, utilizing widely used Instant Messaging applications. Further, the malware can be directed for performing several botnet actions, chief among them being proliferating itself through detachable drives, pulling down more malware online and running those malicious software, as also capturing passwords.

States Microsoft's report that Win32/Rimecud is the most important malicious software which has created the notorious and most dangerous botnets such as Koobface, Alureon, Mariposa, Pushbot, Hamweq, FlyAgent, IRCbot, Hupigon, Virut and Renocide.

The report also highlights that during January-June 2010, it sanitized over 3.5m bot-infected PCs in USA that had been contaminated using Rimecud. Softpedia published this on October 13, 2010.

In addition, the company disclosed that the gigantic worldwide botnet, containing nearly 13m infected PCs inside 190 or more nations, comprised those of 50% of the total Fortune 100 enterprises. Moreover, Rimecud gathered credit card details, banking credentials, account particulars out of e-mail services and social-networking websites, as well as more usernames and passwords, Microsoft said.

Remarking about the virus' growth, the company indicated that it surpassed a few more notorious botnets like Zbot, Nuwar, and Rustock insofar as their scale of activity was concerned.

However, to lessen Rimecud's danger, Corporate Vice President Scott Charney of Trustworthy Computing, Microsoft during a lecture at the Berlin held event, Information Security Solutions Europe in the first week of October 2010 highlighted an Internet safety proposal for the general public that would help fight cyber-crime, particularly botnet attacks.

He proposed how infected PCs could be isolated so that the Web, web-surfers as well as critical infrastructures linked up with the Internet could be protected.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 10/21/2010