Panic over Conficker gives room for botnet

VIP LOUNGE

CLOUD LOGIN

You are here: News > News > Panic over Conficker gives room for botnet

» IT Security NEWS

» 04 May 2009

Panic over Conficker gives room for botnet

Internet scoundrels and spammers are reconstructing their armory of jeopardized machines. They were impaired since November due to the loss of their Internet-villain-friendly Internet service provider McColo.

Security firms revealed that McColo's shutdown has caused an astounding drop of up to 75 percent in spam. All websites hosted by McColo were not allowed for access by major Internet service providers due to investigations by security researchers that the hosting provider caters to many botnets' command and control servers.

Security firms such as McAfee, Symantec, MessageLabs, and others all observed the decline in spam, despite differing extents: from 60 to 75 percent.

This time, McAfee announced that the cybervillains Botherders have swiped 12 million IP addresses during the first three months of 2009. Since the Conficker superworm has taken over the news, attention was driven away from such equally big threats.

According to McAfee's Threats Report notes, nearly one-fifth of all botnet-infected computers are in the United States. The released notes also point out the rampant use of legitimate websites' vulnerabilities to spread malware. This is usually done through drive-by download attacks that are not easily spotted.

In contrast with the data from the first three months of 2008, the amount of junk mail have plummeted by 20 per cent this year, a large part owing to the takedown of McColo. However, we are advised to remain vigilant as Internet villains continue to discover and use more advanced schemes to spread junk mail.