Reseachers discovered a trove of stolen e-mail passwords and FTP credentials. – Last year, Microsoft made a
splash when it led a legal charge against Waledacs operators and gained
control of 276 domains belonging to the botnet. But Waledac does not die easily,
something
underscored recently by researchers at The Last Line of Defense, which
uncovered a trove of nearly 124…
Spam levels may have declined during the holiday season, but spammers are getting back into the swing of things. – Any holiday cheer created by the decline in spam is likely to soon disappear – if it hasn’t already.
Driven by the infamous Rustock botnet, spam has begun to tick upward again. Before Christmas, Rustock was accountable for as much as 44 billion spam e-mails per day, according to Paul Wood, Me…
Security researchers say holiday-related spam has been relatively low this year. – Holiday spam just isn’t what it used to be.
According to security vendors, the amount of Christmas-related spam has
dwindled significantly for 2010. While the end of the year has traditionally
been a time for an upsurge in Christmas holiday spam, it now accounts for less
than 1 percent of all th…
Damballa’s Failsafe botnet detection appliance allows IT managers to find infected systems and decide which compromised machine to remediate first. – Damballa trumpeted the ability to quot;triage quot; compromised systems with
the latest version of its Failsafe botnet detection appliance.
Failsafe 4.1, which Damballa
officially announced Dec. 8, is quot;redefining cyber-security’s definition of
risk, quot; said Stephen Newman, the company’s…
The FBI has arrested a Russian man in connection with a spam operation authorities say netted him $465,000 during a six-month period. – The FBI has linked a 23-year-old Russian man to the notorious Mega-D botnet, which once was responsible for one-third of the world’s spam.
According to federal authorities, Oleg Nikolaenko was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to use Mega-D to spam out e-mails for a crew of criminals speci…
There are several well-known botnets, including Kneber, Rustock and Koobface, pushing out spam and malware each day, clogging up inboxes and compromising Websites. For cyber-criminals, botnets are just business tools that help them make money. Malware is a lucrative business, as Melih Abdulhayoglu, founder and CEO of Comodo, likes to point out& the money is no longer only in drugs, but in creating malware, and the goal is to spread it as far and fast as possible to catch unsuspecting victims. According to Symantec Hosted Services, a botnet’s rental fees can range from $9 an hour to more than $65 an hour. How do the criminals renting the botnets to spread their malware make their money? Here is a rundown of some of the more common botnet-based attacks, as described by Martin Lee from Symantec Hosted Services. Just remember: The scammers don’t need everyone to fall for their attacks. Considering the hundreds of thousands of messages pushed by the botnet, if even 1 percent falls for the scam, they’ve made back the cost of renting out the zombies and gotten a tidy little profit as well. – …
Ciscos Global Threat Report examines the most prevalent Web malware, e-mail attacks, exploits and other cyber-crime incidents from July to September 2010. – Botnet activity, malicious spam and resurgence of SQL
injection attacks were some of the most significant cyber-crime threats during
the third quarter of 2010, according to a multiteam report from Cisco released
Nov. 17.
According to the report, enterprise users experienced an
average of 133 We…
Koobface, a piece of malware that has wormed its way through Facebook, Twitter and other sites, made its operators more than $2 million between June 2009 and June 2010, according to a new report. – A new report has pulled the veil away from the Koobface botnet,
exposing how the operation made more than $2 million between June
2009 and June 2010.
The money-making schemes of the Koobface gang were revealed in a sweeping paper (PDF) released
by Information Warfare Monitor (IWM), a joint v…
SecureWorks uncovered a new botnet targeting Vietnamese dissidents with distributed-denial-of-service attacks. – Hacktivism has appeared again in the cyber-world, this time starring dissidents in Vietnam.
According to SecureWorks, a new Trojan is being used to launch DDoS
(distributed-denial-of-service) attacks against blogs and forums
criticizing the Vietnamese Communist Party. Joe Stewart, SecureWorks
di…
Bredolab is still pushing malware to PCs despite a massive botnet-takedown operation announced this week. Here’s why stopping Bredolab is harder than some may think. – Authorities in the Netherlands made a media splash earlier
this week when they announced the arrest of a man accused
of running a massive botnet of Bredolab-infected PCs. But the
impact of the takedown is not destined to last.
Symantec told eWEEK Oct. 27 the company was still seeing e-mails
co…
Dutch authorities revealed details of their offensive against the Bredolab botnet, which culminated in the arrest of a 27-year-old man in Armenia. – Law enforcement officials in Armenia
arrested a man Oct. 26 accused of masterminding a massive botnet
operation.
According to reports, the 27-year-old suspect was arrested on suspicions
of running the Bredolab botnet. Bredolab
is a popular Trojan downloader used by cyber-criminals to infect
…
The group behind an attack on Twitter last year is now in the botnet-renting business – a racket security pros say can be very profitable. – From spamming to harvesting data, botnets are a hot commodity for attackers. But as the Iranian Cyber Armys decision to sell access to its botnet shows, hawking access to compromised computers can be profitable too.
The price of a botnet depends on a number of factors. The first is size, noted I…
Microsoft identified the most prevalent pieces of botnet malware on the Web – as well as the country many botnet-controlled computers call home. – Most botnet-infected computers reside in the United
States, according to figures from Microsoft.
In Version 9 of its Security Intelligence Report, Microsoft reported finding
2.2 million computers in the United States
under the
control of botnets during the second quarter of the year. That figu…
A new report by McAfee chronicles the evolution of botnets, including the use of sites like Twitter and LinkedIn as command and control mechanisms. – Botnet operators are always on the lookout for ways to get around the
security community a fact that has led some to turn to Web 2.0 to gain an
edge.
In
a new report (PDF), researchers at McAfee examine the evolution of
botnets as well as examples of people using sites like Twitter
and Lin…
A judge has brought Microsoft’s bid to seize ownership of 276 Waledac domains in sight – another blow to what was once one of the most notorious botnets on the Web. – A federal judge has brought Microsoft one step closer to seizing control of 276 domains controlled by the Waledac botnet.
A magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia decided Sept. 3 to recommend that a default judgment be granted in Microsoft’s favor. The defendants in t…
The disruption of the Pushdo botnet has not stopped spammers, despite nearly two-thirds of the botnet’s command and control servers being taken out of commission. – From the shutdown of McColo to last week’s disruption of the Pushdo botnet,
spammers have continually found ways to stay in business.
Nearly 20 of the 30 command and control (CnC) servers associated with Pushdo
were taken offline last week due to efforts by security vendor LastLine.
The servers…
A new report from Symantec put the Rustock botnet at the top of the heap for spamming in spite of the fact the number of infected computers under its control was slashed nearly in half. – Rustock retained the top spot as the busiest spam-sending botnet on the Web this month despite the fact the number of bots under its control shrank.
According to Symantecs August 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report, Rustock increased its output from 32 percent of botnet spam in April to 41 perc…
New research from M86 Security has uncovered another botnet built on a version of the Zeus Trojan that is using exploit kits, malicious ads and malware to steal money and bank credentials from people in the United Kingdom. – Researchers at M86 Security have uncovered yet another
botnet built on the Zeus Trojan that is swiping bank information from people in
the United Kingdom.
The attack is still ongoing, and is known to have stolen
£675,000 (nearly $1.1 million) from customers between July 5 and Aug. 4.
According…
Security firm Trusteer uncovered a 100,000-strong botnet swiping banking credentials, credit card information and other data from Windows users. – Researchers at Trusteer have uncovered a large botnet of 100,000 computers
built using a variant of the Zeus malware.
Almost all of the infected bots are in the United
Kingdom, according to Trusteer. After
infecting the computers with Zeus 2, the botnet pilfered all kinds of user
data, ranging …
A security researcher offers a peak at how botnet operators build million-dollar operations, as well as at a popular scheme they are using to remain elusive while banking profits. –
Starting a career in cyber-crime operation is simple, but just how do
attackers go about building a botnet into a multimillion dollar business?
During the Black Hat security conference in Las
Vegas last week, Damballa Vice President of Research
Gunter Ollmann gave attendees a behind-the-sce…
