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New Botnet Dwarfs Storm

ancientribe writes "Storm is no longer the world's largest botnet: Researchers at Damballa have discovered Kraken, a botnet of 400,000 zombies — twice the size of Storm. But even more disturbing is that it has infected machines at 50 of the Fortune 500, and is undetectable in over 80 percent of machines running antivirus software. Kraken appears to be evading detection by a combination of clever obfuscation techniques that hinder its detection and analysis by researchers."

5 of 607 comments (clear)

  1. I am not trying to obnoxious. by AndGodSed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many of those zombies are Linux platforms?

  2. Detection? by Brit_in_the_USA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    With an "80%" miss rate by AV tools, It would be very helpful to know what software anti-virus programs do detect Storm and Kraken? So that responsible users can check their PC's.

  3. Aggravating... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone else find it absolutely aggravating that these stories

    1. Never tell you how you know if you're infected, and
    2. Never tell you how to clean up your shit if you are.

    However, they always give massively generalized statistics on how vulnerable you are!

    Thanks, asshats.

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  4. Re:Or Unix or Mac ... by shrykk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you honestly think that if Windows were to vanish off the face of the earth tomorrow all these virus authors and botnet operators would suddenly throw their hands up and say "oh well, guess we'll have to find something else to do?"

    Well done, you've managed to switch the argument from the factual to the hypothetical.

    This is the standard debate tactic in this situation. Get everyone tangled in debating the possibility of potential but non-existant Mac and Linux malware, judging its likelihood against factual and vastly damaging Windows viruses, worms and botnets.

    Just acquit Microsoft of all culpability for poor and short-sighted decisions, incurring costs in the billions, for millions of users, by saying, "eh, it was inevitable."

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  5. Re:Designate Windows OS as Terrorist Tool by jandrese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I find it easier to believe that that antivirus tools just suck.

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