Busted Bot Herder and Estimating Bot Population
A teenage bot herder has been arrested in New Zealand who, according to CNN, was responsible for a 1 million node botnet. While the arrest is good news, another notable part of the story is the difficulty in estimating the size of botnets.
The FBI has identified at least 2.5 million unsuspecting computer users who have been victims of so-called "botnet" activity. Hackers install viruses, worms and other attack programs that allow them to take over the computers and use them to commit cyber crimes.
In the same story we see Symantec noting double the number of bots:
Between January and June, Symantec Corp., a leading computer security company, detected more than 5 million bot-infested personal computers carrying out at least one attack a day, according to the company's September report. advertisementThat was a 17 percent decrease form the previous reporting period, according to Symantec, which said hackers appeared to be abandoning the technique because of strengthened security and law enforcement initiatives.
The decrease may be due to PC users cleaning up their machines and removing bot software or they may be dormant bots that have been shut down to stay below the radar. Biological viruses can remain inactive for long periods and then begin infecting hosts. That kind of survival strategy evolved because it works and the same pattern would work for bots as well.
It would be great news if the bot population dropped by 17% but monitoring bot activity alone won't convince me of that.
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