Botnet on Botnet Action

Dausha writes "The Tech Web news site reports a story about Botnet turf wars. Botnets have been around for a while, and are increasing in severity. The latest innovation finds Bots capturing and securing host computers from other bots. Security includes installing software patches, shutting down ports, etc."

Comments

Re:Could someone explain the closing of ports?

[dkf]

Could someone explain why it is important that ports are closed?

The only way to have a message received off the internet is to have a port open. Most ports on desktop computers are only opened to specific machines while you're uploading or downloading some data (whether web, email, or any of a myriad other things). But on server computers, ports have to be open for connections from client machines which are potentially anywhere. If the software behind those ports isn't careful, it's possible to attack the machine through them.

Desktop systems are usually not as highly protected on the inside as server systems (alas) so having a firewall that blocks off server ports "Just In Case" is a good plan.

(And yes, I've left out lots of detail from this potted explanation.)