FBI announces botnet milestone

By David Meyer, ZDNet UK
Friday, June 15, 2007 11:41 AM

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have identified over a million compromised IP addresses which are being used for cybercrime.

The amusingly named Operation Bot Roast, being carried out in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft and the International Botnet Task Force, is an initiative aimed at revealing the scale of the 'botnet' problem and prosecuting those responsible.

Botnets are collections of computers--known as bots or zombies--whose respective owners have no idea their PCs have been hijacked and are being used for identity theft, denial-of-service attacks and the transmission of malware and spam.

The FBI claims that botnets are a "growing threat to national security, the national information infrastructure, and the economy" in the United States. The assistant director for the FBI's Cyber Division, James Finch, urged computer users on Wednesday to "protect themselves from botnets and the associated schemes by practising strong computer security habits".

The organizations participating in Operation Bot Roast are in the process of trying to contact victims to inform them of their computers' compromised status.

As part of Operation Bot Roast, American authorities in May arrested Robert Alan Soloway, the alleged "Seattle Spammer". Soloway stands accused of using a large botnet to circulate tens of millions of spam e-mail. Despite federal laws against such behavior, the United States remains the most prolific originator of spam in the world.


WORTHWHILE?

0

0 votes
Blog

Talkback 0 comments

There are currently no comments for this post.


Tech Jobs Now!

Search for your ideal tech job:

Code concepts: Visual Studio's T4 templates

Web Development

The T4 templating system is used to programmatically generate artifacts. Here's an overview about why the templates are useful and how to work with them.


Read more »


 
Virtualize your way to cost savings
Build an infrastructure that is flexible, scalable, and economical, as you strive to become a truly agile business.

Red Hat Outlines Its Virtualization Strategy and Roadmap for 2009
» Watch the video




Where have all the bosses gone?

Blog thumbnail

I've had dreams of opening my own cafe or bistro...cum music store...cum music school. But, I soon gave up that dream when I realized it would require significant investment and..... by Eileen Yu

Read more »

Tags

  1. attack
  2. authentication and encryption
  3. blog
  4. data security
  5. e - mail
  6. hacking
  7. internet
  8. malware
  9. microsoft corp.
  10. network
  11. network security
  12. pc security
  13. researcher
  14. security
  15. security management
  16. software
  17. spam and phishing
  18. symantec corp.
  19. viruses and worms
  20. web