New Massive Botnet Twice the Size of Storm

Monday, April 7th, 2008

A new botnet twice the size of Storm has ballooned to an army of over 400,000 bots, including machines in the Fortune 500, according to botnet researchers at Damballa. The so-called Kraken botnet has been spotted in at least 50 Fortune 500 companies and is undetectable in over 80 percent of ...

Dismantling a Botnet

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

The arrest of Robert Soloway, the so-called "Spam King" who commanded a botnet of zombies that reportedly sent out billions of spam email messages every day, is a case study in just how difficult killing a botnet can be. His capture does not equate to the release of thousands of ...

Trojan infects PCs to generate SMS spam

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

A Trojan which uses infected PCs to send spam messages to mobile phone users has been discovered. Delf-HA Trojan horse sends spam SMS messages by using the free "Send a text message" facility found on the websites of several Russian mobile network operators. Infected PCs download instructions on the content ...

Zombie PCs spew out 80% of spam

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

Four-fifths of spam now emanates from computers contaminated with Trojan horse infections, according to a study by network management firm Sandvine out this week. Trojans and worms with backdoor components such as Migmaf and SoBig have turned infected Windows PCs into drones in vast networks of compromised zombie PCs. Sandvine reckons ...