The FBI's "Operation Bot Roast" has identified the IP addresses of more than one million zombie computers.
According to the FBI, zombies and the botnets they serve are a growing threat to US national security, the national information infrastructure, and the economy.
The FBI is working with the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University to notify the victim owners of the computers. The FBI is also hoping that during this process it may also uncover additional incidents where botnets have been used to facilitate criminal activity.
Botnets are networks made up of computers — the zombies – that are infected with bots. Bots often reach computers in emails that use social engineering or exploit system vulnerabilities. The aim is for them to be installed silently and to operate for long periods of time without users or security companies realizing.
The botnets are used to facilitate crimes such as identity theft, denial of service attacks, phishing, click fraud, and the mass distribution of spam, adware and spyware.
“The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited,” said FBI Assistant Director for the Cyber Division James Finch.
“An attacker gains control by infecting the computer with a virus or other malicious code and the computer continues to operate normally. Citizens can protect themselves from botnets and the associated schemes by practicing strong computer security habits to reduce the risk that your computer will be compromised.”
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Last update : 25-06-2007 06:51
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