Botnet scams are exploding

[snopes]

Largely unnoticed by the public, botnets have come to inundate the Internet. On a typical day, 40% of the 800 million computers connected to the Internet are bots engaged in distributing e-mail spam, stealing sensitive data typed at banking and shopping websites, bombarding websites as part of extortionist denial-of-service attacks, and spreading fresh infections.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...-botnets_N.htm

[snopes]

Cyberextortionists have perfected denial-of-service attacks, in which thousands of bots are directed to bombard a targeted website with nuisance requests, effectively preventing anyone else from connecting to the site.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/co...bot-side_N.htm

[Latiam]

Didn't DOS happen one year to Revenue Canada for a few days? It was early enough that they didn't extend tax season, though.

No, apperently it was a "glitch." Hmm.

[BluesScale]

This is pretty much old news. 2007 was the year of the botnet. It is still a bit early to say what is happening in 2008 but the growth of the Storm botnet seems slower. We are seeing more and more attacks using social engineers and fewer using software vulnerabilities.

I actually spent the day writing lecture notes on trends in Botnets and I see increasingly clever botnets but I don't know that we will see huge increases in compromised machines. There is so much competition in the botnet rental market that the profits are pretty thin these days

Blues

[phaed2]

This problem is a result of insecure Windows boxes and Internet user ignorance. It's everybody's responsibility to learn about security vulnerabilities and protect against them. Those 40% whose computers are infected are the ones responsbile for the spam that is deluging inboxes. It already costs businesses some $10 billion per year (I've heard). It could cripple the Internet within a decade.

Spammers have already cracked the CAPTCHA functions of the major webmail providers: Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail. We need a overhaul of Internet security.