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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master

NRT-0020 BOTNETS:

BOTNETS: Danger to the Internet?

Internet expert Vint Cerf warned attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the Internet is at serious risk from botnets, according to a recent press report. Likening the spread of botnets to a pandemic, Cerf warns that these vast networks of compromised PCs - used by criminals for sending spam and spyware and for launching denial of service attacks - could undermine the future health of the internet. Cert predicts that a quarter of all PCs currently connedted to the internet - around 150 million - could be infected by Trojans, which covertly seize control of a comuter and its broadband connection, providing control to remote criminals. Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs, is cited as concurring with Cerf's assessment and warning. Sunner said that, around the turn of the year, security experts were watching one botnet, called Spam Thru, which not only had its own antivirus protection to clear other botnets off a claimed computer, but had the potential to be roughly 10 times more productive than most other botnets while still evading detection because of built-in defenses. Sunner added: "With new levels of sophistication, this has reached a real milestone. Botnets are getting smaller, more stealthy, and more discreet and yet volumes of spam are going up." (silicon.com 29JAN07)

Last Modified: Friday, 02-Feb-2007 00:22:55 EST