The botnet army: 12 million new recruits in three months | July 27, 2009

By Peter Wolchak

Cybercriminals took control of almost 12 million IP addresses in Q1 2009, according to a report from security firm McAfee. That infection rate is 50 per cent higher than in 2008, and the U.S. is now home to the largest contingent of botnet-infected PCs, hosting 18 per cent of the world’s zombie machines.

Botnets are groups of computers (called zombies) that have been compromised by worms, Trojan horses or some other type of backdoor software and are secretly being used by a controller called a bot herder or a botmaster. Bots are typically used for profit-making criminal activities, often centring on spam distribution.

“The massive expansion of these botnets provides cybercriminals with the infrastructure they need to flood the Web with malware,” said Jeff Green, senior vice-president of McAfee Avert Labs.

Particularly troubling, malware writers are increasingly using otherwise legitimate sites to host their software. That means a visit to almost any Web site can result in infection.