Botnet management app Zunker exposed

A new and unusually sophisticated application for controlling and monitoring botnet PCs has been discovered by security company Panda Software. Called Zunker, it turns out to be a PC management application like no other. The company reports that the program is capable of giving botnet criminals user-friendly graphs of individual botnet performance, including the number of available compromised "zombies" on each at any one time, and their levels of activity on a daily or monthly basis.

To all intents and purposes, Zunker operates as would any other PC management system except that the intent of the application is criminal.

According to Panda Software, Zunker has been used to control and monitor tens of thousands of PCs across up to 54 countries, which would put it in control of a fairly standard botnet. Fifty-four percent of the PCs infected remained under its control at the time of its discovery.