botnets - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• DDoS attacks increase in number, endanger small organisations

  The number of DDoS attacks increased by 180 percent during the third quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2014.

• Government security breaches decrease: report

  Australian government networks are being targeted daily by cyber crooks but improved security has seen the number of ‘confirmed significant compromises’ decrease since 2012, a study has found.
  

• DNS reveals the top cyberthreats of 2012. And you guessed it ... no one is safe.

  Our team at Nominum recently looked at the biggest threats to fixed networks at the DNS layer. Why the DNS layer? Because it is ubiquitous -- every network runs on it -- and it is the best option for protecting critical infrastructure.

• In Pictures: 20 notorious worms, viruses and botnets

  The earliest worms and viruses were created for geeky fun and did little harm - oh, how times have changed. Here are 20 worms, viruses and botnets that show the evolution of malware, from Creeper to Flame.

• Botnets decentralise after Redmond’s kingpin takedowns

  Recent efforts by Microsoft and law enforcement to take down the biggest spamming botnets may have helped fight pharmaceutical companies but they have had little effect on overall spam levels.

• Zeus leaks give tools to researchers, attackers

  The source code and a manual to the popular crimeware creation kit Zeus has been leaked, perhaps giving defenders additional tools to fight infections but also raising concerns that criminals may use the source code to create a rapidly expanding compendium of variants.

• Group used 30,000-node botnet in MasterCard, PayPal attacks

  PayPal's website was hit late Wednesday by two botnets as online activists continued their Web attacks on companies that have severed their relationships with WikiLeaks.

• Botnet takedown may yield valuable data

  Researchers are hoping to get a better insight on botnets after taking down part of Pushdo, one of the top five networks of hacked computers responsible for most of the world's spam.

• Texas man to plead guilty to building botnet-for-hire

  A Mesquite, Texas, man is set to plead guilty to training his 22,000-PC botnet on a local ISP -- just to show off its firepower to a potential customer.

• FBI embeds cyber-investigators in Ukraine, Estonia

  Hoping to catch cybercrooks, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun embedding agents with law enforcement agencies in Estonia, the Ukraine and the Netherlands.

• Botnet revelation shows darker underbelly of malware

  Information gathered about a newly discovered botnet called Kneber indicates that multiple infections by different malware on the same host could work together as a sophisticated mechanism to give all the malware a better survival rate.

• Botnet targets major Web sites with junk SSL connection

  More than 300 Web sites are being pestered by infected computers that are part of the Pushdo botnet, according to security researchers.

• Good Guys Bring Down the Mega-D Botnet

  For two years as a researcher with security company FireEye, Atif Mushtaq worked to keep Mega-D bot malware from infecting clients' networks. In the process, he learned how its controllers operated it.

• Hackers find a home in Amazon's EC2 cloud

  Security researchers have spotted the Zeus botnet running an unauthorized command and control center on Amazon's EC2 cloud computing infrastructure.

• 3 basic steps to avoid joining a botnet

  Banging the drum for security awareness never gets old. As much as CSOs try to get folks to bone up on safe practices (both online and in the office), there are always going to be some who need reminding.