Cyber Gang botnet-building authorities.

Nearly two million PCs to be criminals from the Ukraine under its control have brought. Most of them are in government and may soon be millions of spam e-mails sent daily. An American researcher believes that with technology alone, such attacks were not fighting.

 

The discovery presented a security company Finjan in the IT security RSA Conference in San Francisco. Total
1.9 million PCs were with a certain malicious software has been infected, which they controlled from the outside do, it is said in a statement the company. As part of a study were employees of Finjan Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC), a so-called command-and-control server examines the cyber criminals the zombie network. The server itself localized the experts in the Ukraine.

Screenshot of the command server: 1.9 million PCs in a botnet

According to the report, mainly in government computer networks of the infection, with the majority of hijacked PCs in the U.S. be ready. Approximately 45 percent of zombie computers, as Finjan, were in U.S. government domains with extensions such as. Gov has been found. In Germany, according to Finjan four percent of Ukraine from the remote computer, so at least 76,000 devices. The rest of zombie computers are spread all over the world.

According to Finjan researchers in charge of a criminal group with six members of the network. With the help of the investigated command server if they were capable of almost any command on the infected PC to run. Thus, for example, read e-mails, copy files or you can record keystrokes. Above all, it is possible for them that hijacked PC to send spam e-mails to be used.

Facher million spam shipping

And that can cause plenty of trouble. A recent study by the California security company Tracelabs to send some PCs into botnets involved
up to 25,000 spam emails per hour. On the botnet discovered by Finjan transferred 1.14 million would be the nerve-mails in just one hour, more than 27 million messages per day - and thus potentially a lot of money that the botnet operators can thus earn their services.

As the infection for which the underlying malicious botnet software Finjan has a rigged Web page identified. "The increasing sophistication of malware, as well as the rapidly rising number of infected computers show that cyber-criminals ever higher the bar set," said Finjan's financial chief Yuval Ben-Itzhak. Money was the driving force behind cybercrime, said the manager, called on companies and organizations, more than ever, prior to their corporate data to protect cyber attacks.

The gangsters have to be hunted

Only in technology should allow for this self-defense, however, do not leave the postulated
Security expert Joe Stewart Secure Works. Also there was little chance of success, to try a botnet operators off by him through his hosting provider from the network can take. In general, would command a new server in another country, a little later its function.

Stewart proposes that the formation of a special kind of group IT security industry. The target should be the traces of individual criminal groups and their members to hunt until the last ding notes can be made. Only then, Stewart believes, could be the problem of botnets - and the associated malicious programs and spam e-mails - really get to grips with.