Posted on 10/26/2009 1:46:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In the dark world of the cybercriminal economy, computer viruses battle not just against anti-virus security software, but even other strains of malware for control of infected PCs, security researchers said.
A strain of Trojan malware identified as Bredo contains code that disables the Zeus/Zbot Trojan and moves files to prevent Zeus from reinstalling itself on reboot, according to security researchers from Sophos.
Malware authors have previously targeted other malware as a way to keep PCs under their control and not controlled by a rival bot herder. The cybercriminals use networks of infected PCs - called botnets - to distribute malware and spam and for stealing user credentials, passwords and contact lists.
"These guys want to control your computer but don't like to share," Sophos said on its malware blog recently.
The Zeus botnet has been spreading its malicious payload in spam emails that spoof messages form Microsoft Outlook, the IRS and companies' own IT departments. Users who click on a link in these messages can be infected by the Trojan upon visiting a malicious website.
Ping
Botnets Drive Up Click Fraud Rate in Third Quarter 2009
SEW
Click Forensics has released its click fraud report for the third quarter of 2009. Botnet activity caused the rate to rise and accounted for more click fraud activity.
The click fraud rate rose to 14.1% in the third quarter, up from 12.7% in the second quarter, but down from 16% in the third quarter of 2008.
Botnets accounted for 42.6% of click fraud in Q3 2009, more than double the 27.5% rate in Q3 2008.
"The significant rise in botnet-generated click fraud lines up with recent findings of several well-known malware and online fraud tracking experts," said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. "Botnets perpetrating click fraud and other online schemes continue to grow in number and sophistication. Advertisers and ad providers need to be especially vigilant about such activity as we enter the competitive search marketing holiday season."
Outside of North America, the countries producing the most click fraud were United Kingdom, Vietnam and Germany.
One of the most significant findings in the third quarter was the discovery of the "Bahama botnet," which was redirecting traffic through 200,000 parked domains located in the Bahamas. Click Forensics detected a link between the Bahama botnet and the New York Times ad scareware incident.
So, somebody give me a bot that I control and keeps all other bots off my machine.
It’s called the PowerOffSwitchbot.
Use FireFox, AVG and SpyBot S&D and you don’t need to worry.
Oh, and don’t click links in email.
Also run Avira as a secondary anti-virus program to get the heuristic protection too. Norton 2010 is adding this too, but I'm waiting to see if they slimmed down Norton so it doesn't take forever to run and suck up all your available RAM (AVG has started to do this too.)
Ad-Aware and Malwarebyes are good backups for SpyBot S&D, but they don't have scheduleable scans on the free versions. Also CA Anti-spy on the Yahoo Toolbar is a good quick scan, that does catch both malware and viruses, but may not get rid of them all.
Wish there was a single program to protect and get rid of all viruses and malware, but vigilance and a spectrum of protection is the only way to stay ahead of the black hats out there.
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