[ news_security_news ]
Botnet Backers Battle For Bucks
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-05-14
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
A trio of groups distributing bots through mass mailing campaigns have been fighting each other through their software to build the bigger bot network.
The zero sum game of crime has escalated for the people behind three of the most persistent mass mailing attacks that have been taking place into 2007.
Alexander Gostev, Senior Virus Analyst with Kaspersky Lab wrote about how the backers of the Bagle, Zhelatin, and Warezov worms made the first three months of 2007 a difficult one for computer security researchers.
"Malicious programs will continue to become more sophisticated technologically, and will use new methods in order to mask their presence in the system," he wrote. "Polymorphism, garbage code and rootkit technologies will be even more widely used and will become the de facto standard for the majority of new malicious programs."
Warezov led to a number of machines being corrupted with bots through the end of 2006. The program placed mass mailing engines on those corrupted machines. A new outflow of spam looked likely, and on January 20th it happened just as Europe dug out of a fierce storm.
The resulting flood of spam dropped downloaders onto machines. Security observers dubbed it the "Storm" worm due to its genesis after Hurricane Kyrill.
The Zhelatin group has been battling with the Warezovs in January, with Bagle's backers joining in March.
"Almost 32% of all malicious code in mail traffic in March 2007 was made up of Trojan-Spy.HTML.Bankfraud.ra. This was clearly a result of the epidemics caused by Bagle, Zhelatin and Warezov," Gostev said.
With three groups fighting over botnets and collecting addresses and other information to sell to spammers, security companies have their work cut out for them in 2007.
---
Tags: Botnets, Warezov, Zhelatin, Bagle
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
More news_security_news Articles
Insider Reports RSS Feed
|
|
iEntry 10th Anniversary
RSS
Archive
