Obviously this zombie threat is deadly serious. Think of what terrorists could do if they commandeered millions of PCs for nefarious purposes.
I wish the article described how a user could identify if bot software lives on his/her machine.
I notice a significant slowdown of my PC from time to time when using IE7, not so with Firefox. I wonder...?
What will Windows Vista do to protect against this threat?
"Computer security experts warn that botnet programs are evolving faster than security firms can respond and have now come to represent a fundamental threat to the viability of the commercial Internet. The problem is being compounded, they say, because many Internet service providers are either ignoring or minimizing the problem.
"?It'?s a huge scientific, policy, and ultimately social crisis, and no one is taking any responsibility for addressing it,"
said K. C. Claffy , a veteran Internet researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
The $6 billion computer security industry offers a growing array of products and services that are targeted at network operators, corporations and individual computer users. Yet the industry has a poor track record so far in combating the plague, according to computer security researchers.
'?This is a little bit like airlines advertising how infrequently they crash into mountains,'? said Mr. Dagon, the Georgia Tech researcher.
The malicious software is continually being refined by 'black hat' programmers to defeat software that detects the malicious programs by tracking digital fingerprints.
Some botnet-installed programs have been identified that exploit features of the Windows operating system, like the ability to recognize recently viewed documents. Botnet authors assume that any personal document that a computer owner has used recently will also be of interest to a data thief, Mr. Dagon said."
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