SlashGear for iPad and iPhone
RSS Feed

‘botnet’ Stories

Bamital Botnet destroyed: Microsoft, Symantec victorious

, Feb 7th 2013 Discuss [0]

This week the Botnet known as Bamital has been reported dead by the two warriors that claim to have killed it: Symantec and Microsoft. This report shows that the death of said botnet will take down its abilities in full: hijacking search results galore being the main evil this Bamital creature was working with. Each time a user in the line of fire searched for something using search engines from whens they'd be sent to a malicious 3rd party site, having malware installed from that point. Read The Full Story

Microsoft makes major progress in fight against Nitol Botnet

, Sep 13th 2012 Discuss [0]

Microsoft has kicked off a new initiative to try to stop the spread of the Nitol Botnet, and it has the backing of a US District Court in East Virginia in doing so. Microsoft's Digital Crime Unit was granted permission to go after those distributing the Botnet after it was discovered that cybercriminals were infiltrating the company's supply chain. Apparently, these unfavorable folks were loading counterfeit software housing the malware onto PCs at some point in the supply chain, leading retailers to unknowingly sell the infected machines. Read The Full Story

Global spam falls by 18% as Grum botnet is knocked offline

, Jul 19th 2012 Discuss [0]

There are dedicated botnets out there in the wide world that exist solely for the purpose of distributing spam. Grub, the third largest botnet in the world, was finally taken offline by security experts yesterday, resulting in a dramatic 18% reduction of global spam. Grum’s servers, which were based in Russia, Panama, and the Netherlands, controled around 100,000 PCs. The two botnets that take first and second place, Cutwail and Lethic, are still active. Read The Full Story

Microsoft versus the botnet Gods

, Mar 26th 2012 Discuss [0]

Microsoft launched a surprise raid on botnet operators late last week, it's been revealed, though experts suggest the strike against Zeus may deliver only very short-term gains. The company seized servers, domain names and other evidence from two offices in Pennsylvania and Illinois on Friday, March 23, the NYTimes reports, challenging those who harvest credit card and other personal data from unwitting internet users - as well as potentially turning their PCs into DDOS weapons - rather than waiting for federal agencies to get into gear. Read The Full Story

Kelihos botnet claws its way out of the grave

, Feb 3rd 2012 Discuss [2]

We have some bad news today for haters of spam everywhere. Apparently, the Kelihos botnet that Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab shutdown in September 2011 is making a comeback. The botnet is spamming once again. The botnet was able to infect 45,000 computers before being shutdown and was sending out 4 billion spam messages a day. The spam messages flooded the web with promotions for porn, illegal drugs, and other scams. Read The Full Story