Dutch extortion botnet
p2p news / p2pnet: In October, Dutch police arrested three people who’d created a large botnet and used it to extort money from US companies, says Bruce Schneier on his blog.
The botnet comprised some 100,000 computers, according to the authorities, he says, but, "The actual number was 1.5 million computers" and, "I’ve heard reports from reputable sources that the actual number was ’significantly higher’ " and may still be growing.
"The bots continually scan the network and try to infect other machines," states Schneier, adding:
"They do this autonomously, even after the command and control node was shut down. Since most of those 1.5 million machines – or however many there are – still have the botnet software running on them, it’s reasonable to believe that the botnet is still growing."
Also See:
blog – Schneier on Security, December 22, 2005
