SAN FRANCISCO -- Across the world, thousands of home computers have been conscripted into zombie computer gangs that cyber criminals use to spam, attack and defraud others on the net, causing considerable consternation to law enforcement and security professionals alike, who count the so-called botnets as the most vexing net threat today.

Today's botnet herders have hundreds of thousands of computers at their command and use technically sophisticated ways to hide their headquarters, making it easy for them to make millions from spam and credit card theft. They can also be used to direct floods of fake traffic at a targeted website in order to bring down a rival, extract protection money or less frequently, used to make a political point in the case of attacks on Estonia and the Church of Scientology,

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 14:55

For the first time, the amount of malicious software being released has outstripped that of legitimate software, according to new research.

Malware now makes up the majority of all new applications: 65 percent of the 54,609 applications developed and released to the public for Windows-based PCs in the past six months were malicious, according to Symantec's latest threat report.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Virus & AntiVirus News at 12:44

HP has released a batch of USB keys for numerous Proliant server models which contain malware that could allow an attacker to take over an infected system.

The worms contained on the 256KB and 1GB USB drives have been identified as W32.Fakerecy and W32.SillyFDC. The worms spread by copying themselves to removable or mapped drives and affect systems running Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows NT and Windows 2000, according to AusCERT.

Posted by Sean Cannon in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 09:20