A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer – Invasion of the BotNets

I have written about this in the past as well, and there have been bots found on computers in hospitals too, so it is important to keep up to date on security issues. I had one of the so called bots present a window on one of my computers, asking me to install their security system, looked like a Windows screen, but not. Even when I scanned it, there were no showings of any virus activity, so the bad guys are getting smarter at the way they go about infecting and taking over computers. The FBI may want your computer if the botnets are found as well. BD

“There are a lot of very smart people doing very bad things,” he said.

REDMOND, Wash. — In a windowless room on Microsoft’s campus here, T. J. Campana, a cybercrime investigator, connects an unprotected computer running an early version of Windows XP to the Internet. In about 30 seconds the computer is “owned.”

An automated program lurking on the Internet has remotely taken over the PC and turned it into a “zombie.” That computer and other zombie machines are then assembled into systems called “botnets” — home and business PCs that are hooked together into a vast chain of cyber-robots that do the bidding of automated programs to send the majority of e-mail spam, to illegally seek financial information and to install malicious software on still more PCs. Although the Microsoft team has filed more than 300 civil lawsuits against botnet operators, the company also relies on enforcement agencies like the F.B.I. and Interpol-related organizations for criminal prosecution.

Botnets have evolved quickly to make detection more difficult. During the last year botnets began using a technique called fast-flux, which involved generating a rapidly changing set of Internet addresses to make the botnet more difficult to locate and disrupt.

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