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Botnet Growth: 30,000 Daily Attacks And Cybersecurity Threats

According to a semi-annual report released by Symantec this week, these bot nets, are growing at an incredible rate. Last year, Symantec saw about 2,000 machines per day recruited into these bot armies. In its new report, that figure had grown to 30,000 per day. An unprotected machine will typically be attacked within 20 minutes of being put on the Internet, according to Weafer. "The fastest we've seen was a machine taken over six seconds after it was connected to the Web," he says. . . .. Weafer is speaking of "bot networks," ad-hoc clusters of several thousands computers that--unbeknownst to the user--are being deployed toward some nefarious end. Bot nets originate when a user unwittingly downloads a Trojan horse program containing malicious code. Sometimes the code gets onto a user's computer when the user clicks on an e-mail attachment. Other times it's embedded in a virus, and other times it's masked as a different program and downloaded through peer-to-peer networks or IRC channels. According to a semi-annual report released by Symantec this week, these bot nets, are growing at an incredible rate. Last year, Symantec saw about 2,000 machines per day recruited into these bot armies. In its new report, that figure had grown to 30,000 per day. An unprotected machine will typically be attacked within 20 minutes of being put on the Internet, according to Weafer. "The fastest we've seen was a machine taken over six seconds after it was connected to the Web," he says. The link for this article located at Technology Review is no longer available. . Investigate the surge of automated systems and their concerning escalation—expanding from 3,000 to 35,000 devices each day.. Bot Networks,Cyber Threats,Symantec Report,Malware Attacks,Internet Safety. . Anthony Pell

Sep 24, 2004 • Anthony Pell Network Security