The economics of Botnets

In the past ten years, botnets have evolved from small networks of a dozen PCs controlled from a single C&C (command and control center) into sophisticated distributed systems comprising millions of computers with decentralized control. Why are these enormous zombie networks created? The answer can…

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New KOOBFACE Upgrade Makes It Takedown-Proof

Early this week, the KOOBFACE Command and Control (C&C) servers issued a new command to its downloader component. This new command identifies a list of IP addresses to be used by the downloader component as Web or relay proxies to retrieve subsequent commands and components. In the old KOOBFACE architecture (see Figure 1), the [...]

Erin Andrews Video Attacks Target Macs and PCs

Internet crooks love to create attack sites and e-mails that use lures based on popular news items and Internet porn. When the two come together, as with the recent news of an online “peephole” video of ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews, the malware is sure to swarm.

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