Posted on 05/07/2009 11:59:29 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Twelve million computers have been brought into botnets since January, according to a new report — and 18% of all zombie machines are in the US.
A new report from security company McAfee says that since January an estimated 12 million computers have been infected with malware and turned into zombies, making them part of botnets, and that these zombie numbers have increased by 50% since last year.
At 18%, the US hosts the largest number of infected machines, followed by China with 13%.
Jeff Green, senior vice-president of McAfee, said:
“The massive expansion of these botnets provides cyber-criminals with the infrastructure they need to flood the web with malware."
"Essentially, this is cyber-crime enablement."
Meanwhile, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT) is saying in a new paper that the cyberthreats grow ever stronger, and urgent action is needed.
Greg Pellegrino, who is a global public sector industry leader at DTT, told the BBC:
"This issue is moving so quickly, and with so much at stake economically and in terms of safety and security for people, we don't have 100 years to figure this out."
"We are seeing this change from protecting the internet to a conversation about how we succeed and prosper in cyberspace."
"Security spending is growing at a rate never seen before while the threat environment is growing at a pace of 40% a year.”
"In terms of volume and severity of incidents, the math doesn't work and we have to come up with a different approach that requires public and private sectors working together."
All this comes as President Obama is preparing to release a review into cybersecurity, which his administration has made a priority.
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I am pretty stupid about this stuff. Would you know if your computer was a zombie?
I have a recurring issue on one XP Home laptop. A rootkit is repeatedly infecting atrac.dll; Norton doesn’t seem to even detect it. I got an antivirus from PCTools, and that disables it, but fails to delete or quarantine it. Another computer on the home network is on Symantec and is fine.
Anyone experienced anything similar?
Yes. It start moaning for "brainzzzzz"
With the internet now hooked into everything... trusted to run it all.. it is only time before it became self- aware...
So I suggest life in prison or even capital punishment for hackers who release viruses.
BUT!!! these are the same people who FIND these leaks in the system, so I also suggest a substantial cah reward for anyoine who can find BUT NOT RELEASE a virus loophole.
I worked and went to school with many of these assholes.
The 30 year old living in his parents basement IS correct but there is a mangerial level who control them for these beusinss ventures.
Did it vote for Obama?
PS Regular zombies die when you cut off their head and blow out their brains, how the hell do you kill a zombie computer?
Keep your antivirus current and run a free malware check from time to time and you’ll be fine. Watch for unusual disk or network activity - lights on your router (if you have one) when you’re not expecting them. Maybe it’s Microsoft or RedHat updates; maybe it’s some clown using your box to mail porn or do a denial-of-service attack. You’ll get lots of suggestions on this thread, I haven’t a doubt.
Thank you for the actual helpful post!
Perhaps it’s the malware and virii that is preventing the Net from becoming self-aware.
There are also countries behind such attacks. And I suspect people on competing platforms (Linux, Mac) who do such things in a “foreign” environment (MS) so as not to pee in their own swimming pool.
This wasn’t what I had in mind when I think about fighting “zombies” with my AR.
No....
I had a nasty memory-resident infection of something similar on my computer once.
Remove your current AV, and install Avast and that Malwarebytes software. Both are free for home use.
Run a scan and see if this helps.
Thanks. I did have a trojan the other day (I think that’s the correct term). Luckily I called my son and he walked me thru a cure. It’s only the second thing I’ve ever had in all my years online, but I suspect it was just a matter of time.
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