Back Your PC could be led too!
Vipin V. Nair
| Watch out for a new cyber crime in the air that turns your system into a slave to serve spamsters. |
IF you are an avid Internet user, surfing from home and have opened unsolicited e-mails, watch out. Chances are that someone else is now using your computer on the sly to perpetrate crimes of international magnitude.
A cyber crime called `Bot Networks', wherein spamsters and other perpetrators of cyber crimes remotely take control of computers without the users realising it, is increasing at an alarming rate, a new study has said.
Computers get linked to Bot Networks when users unknowingly download malicious codes such as Trojan horse sent as e-mail attachments. (Trojan horse is a destructive software programme that appears to be innocuous.)
Once inadvertently downloaded, the software will remain hidden and dormant in the infected system, until those who sent it activate it for nefarious activities such as spreading spam mails.
Such affected computers, known as `zombies,' can work together whenever the malicious code within them get activated, and those who are behind the Bot Neworks attacks get the computing powers of thousands of systems at their disposal.
Perpetrators can activate the code when a user logs on to the Net. In broadband connections, which are becoming popular, the chances of discovering the Bot code are relatively low since the Net's speed drop may not be easily perceived.
According to the study by Symantec, an anti-virus and Internet security solutions maker, in the first six months of this year the number of computers getting affected every day by the Bot (the term derived from `robot') code has surged to over 30,000 from less than 2,000. One day, it was monitored to be peaking at 75,000 machines getting affected.
"Attackers often coordinate large groups of Bot-controlled systems, or Bot networks, to scan for vulnerable systems and use them to increase the speed and breadth of their attacks. Over the past six months, Symantec has seen a large increase in the number of remotely controlled bots," the study says.
Symantec says that "Bot networks create unique problems for organisations because they can be remotely upgraded with new exploits very quickly," and this could help attackers pre-empt security efforts.
The attacks are often targeted at home PCs, which may not have adequate security software. Nevertheless, experts say that many times the Bot codes are written so ingeniously that even anti-virus software doesn't detect them.
© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu Business Line