We all know what botnets are (think so), but anyway let’s see a proper definition of botnets taken from shadowserver… and I quote:

A botnet is a collection of computers, connected to the internet, that interact to accomplish some distributed task. Although such a collection of computers can be used for useful and constructive applications, the [...]

Another one bites the dust with another reasonably hefty sentence, this time a botherder or botnet master.
Just under 4 years and a big chunk of change as a fine, I guess he probably has plenty of cash stashed somewhere though. These guys can really rake it in with their mass infectors of doom.

A US-based hacker [...]

It seems like botnets are getting more sophisticated - we thought the Storm Worm was pretty hot, but some of these new contenders are showing the guys on the dark side has some advanced understanding of technology and the architecture many companies use…this enables them to get deeper inside and remain undetected

Researchers have unearthed two [...]

Hacking for money again? Well not really in this case, more like script kiddying for money - modifying an ‘off the shelf’ malware/bot package to evade detection and then cashing in on spamware affiliate fees.
I guess they could have made much with a 400,000 bot network - by renting it out for DDoS attacks to [...]

So what’s coming next, after Storm you might ask. You might remember Storm Worm Descending on Blogspot recently and other news about Botnets spiraling out of control accounting for almost 25% of online computers.
Well apparently next will be p2p or peer to peer Botnets which could literally blow Storm away.

You know about the Storm Trojan, [...]

Apparently he stopped his naughty activities back in 2006, but still…a guy that is supposed to securing machines was installing malware and had a bot totaling about a quarter of a million zombies.
Most used for info gathering, Paypal accounts and installing Malware for comission, he claims to have made $19,000 in a week installing TopConverting [...]

It seems like spammers, scammers, phishers and now malware authors are starting to leverage blogs more and more, especially Blogger/Blogspot as Google tend to be quite slow in responding and sometimes don’t respond at all.
This makes it an ideal platform for dodgy behaviour as the crooks have adequate lead time to con/infect people before they [...]

Well at least it shows the Internet is not very susceptible to such attacks due to its distributed nature, even if the root nameservers are down, the DNS system still functions.
This was a pretty heavy attack though and the most significant in the past 5 years or so, someone testing their ego I guess.
I CAN [...]

This effort started quite a long time ago, I was just checking up to see how they were getting on, but there’s not much news of their progress.
perating under the theory that if you kill the head, the body will follow, a group of high-profile security researchers is ramping up efforts to find and disable [...]

Malware herders are speeding up, the first wave is already here for MS06-40.
It’s basically a variant of some old malware suited to the new vulnerability. Same old story then, same packer, technique, new exploit.
Same as the days of autorooters.
It’s basically the Mocbot trojan that was used in the Zotob worm attack in August 2005.

The first [...]