Malicious 'botnets' turn PCs into 'zombie' slaves

The Oregonian ^ | 10-21-08 | JOHN MARKOFF

[Bean Counter]

Scourge - Programs hiding on the Internet can take over a computer and make it send spam or perform other evil acts

REDMOND, Wash. -- In a windowless room on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, T.J. Campana, a cybercrime investigator, connects an unprotected computer running an early version of Windows XP to the Internet. In less than a minute the computer is "owned."

An automated program lurking on the Internet has remotely taken over the PC and turned it into a "zombie." That computer and other zombie machines are then assembled into systems called "botnets" -- home and business PCs hooked together into a vast chain of cyber-robots that do the bidding of automated programs to send the majority of e-mail spam, to illegally seek financial information and to install malicious software on still more PCs.

Botnets remain an Internet scourge. Active zombie networks created by a growing criminal underground peaked last month at more than a half-million computers, according to shadowserver.org, an organization that tracks botnets. Even though security experts have diminished the botnets to about 300,000 computers, that is still twice the number detected a year ago.

**SCHNIPP**

[Knitebane]

The greatest threat to a system’s security is always the end user.

The second biggest threat: Operating systems from Microsoft.

Put the two together and you get massive zombie nets capable of attacking and taking entire countries off the Internet.