2010 saw a dramatic increase in cyber crime and targeted botnet attacks, and at its peak around Christmas, the total number of unique botnet victims was 654 percent greater than the victim population at the beginning of the year, according to a new report. “Prior to 2010, many people thought in terms of spam and […] More
A man believed to a malware author has been arrested in Slovenia. The 23-year-old virus writer, known as Iserdo, is said to be the author of the Mariposa virus, which infected more than 12.7 million computers and was dismantled earlier this year. Since its discovery, law enforcement organizations in the United States and Europe have […] More
Botnets have become increasingly more common tools among hackers, but this year there has been signification success with shutting them down. While law enforcement agencies celebrate the success, there is one side that is not happy: the jobless hacker. In an interview with BBC, Panda Security’s Luis Corrons talked about how following the shutdown of […] More
In recent months, several botnets have been taken down through a variety of legal and technical methods. However, according to Google survey, spam levels have remained stable despite these supposed disruptions. In spite of the recent take-downs of the Mariposa, Zeus and Waledac botnets, Google Postini has found that these actions had little long term […] More
In the fight against cyber crime, while exciting technological advances and major data heists often steal the spotlight, most of the effective actions taken against cyber criminals have taken place in court. Writing about the Waledac botnet take-down on Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center blog, program manager Jeff Williams opined, “we've also learned from this experience […] More
Recently, two major botnets have been brought down through legal channels and arrests. Microsoft used a court order to take out one botnet and Spanish authorities arrested the administrators of the Mariposa botnet. Despite these recent successes, some security researchers have begun to question the how effective taking out a botnet really is, according to […] More
Earlier this year, Microsoft demonstrated one way to take out a botnet. Earlier this week, Spanish authorities provided another option, namely arresting the botnet handlers. Spanish authorities arrested 3 cyber criminals who were behind the Mariposa botnet, which was one of the largest botnets in the world and, according to investigators, infected PCs in over […] More
