03.05.10
Gemini version available ♊︎FBI Eliminates ~12,000,000 Windows Zombies Botnet, But Hundreds of Millions Remain
Summary: The latest Windows botnet crackdown is just a drop in the bucket and Microsoft Windows is once again just a keypress away from full compromise
A FEW days ago we wrote about just one large Windows botnet being addressed. It appears as though the FBI was involved. The FBI too has suffered from Windows malware, even internally [1, 2].
More details have emerged about a cybercrime investigation that led to the takedown of a botnet containing 12m zombie PCs and the arrest of three alleged kingpins who built and ran it.
That’s just peanuts. 12 million Windows zombie PCs are less than 3% of the world’s estimated total. To botmasters, there are still hundreds of millions of Windows zombie PCs to pick from.
“Users of Windows currently have to worry about hitting a particular physical key.”“Monster botnet held 800,000 people’s details,” says this other new report, so these Windows zombies have already caused theft and huge damages that are hard to measure (according to some estimates, the cost may easily exceed a trillion dollars in total, for Windows botnets as a whole). It is estimated that about one in two Windows PCs is is a zombie PC [1, 2], with Microsoft itself putting the optimistic bar at about a third (2009 figures).
Two days ago we wrote about the F1 flaw, which is now confirmed by Microsoft. It shows that nothing is improving. Users of Windows currently have to worry about hitting a particular physical key. █
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Needs Sunlight said,
March 5, 2010 at 12:38 pm
It’s only a cyberwar if both sides can fight…
Just wait till this gets combined with the banks being able to deny accountability for their own intentionally insecure ‘banking’ systems.
Needs Sunlight Reply:
March 5th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
How much money did Den Danske Banken and partners lose in their MS SharePoint jihad?
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
March 5th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
They had a “computer problem”.
Robotron 2084 said,
March 6, 2010 at 1:15 am
It’s worth repeating that Roy himself is the one claiming 1 in 2 machines is part of a botnet via two of his own articles. Not the larger audience of security companies, IT professionals, or even regular users. You’ll be hard press to find anyone using a ratio that severe.