Botnets Running Rampant

Cybercriminals have created a global business with a supply chain every bit as organized and sophisticated as that of any legitimate business. The difference is that cybercrime takes advantage of unsuspecting consumers and insecure businesses to steal untold amounts of money.

According to security experts and spam fighters speaking at a panel discussion last week at the RSA Conference, the modern, online criminal ecosystem starts with botnets, which are consumer or college PCs that have been taken over by hackers. A cybercriminal can easily go online and buy a bot-herd. In fact, Joe St. Sauver, manager of security programs at the Internet2 networking consortium and the University of Oregon, said there are 5 million to 5.5 million botnets in active rotation at any time.

Of course, cybercriminals need only a few hundred spambots to send out millions of spam e-mails. Today, a cybercriminal can hire programmers to come up with the latest and greatest types of spam, such as image spam or spam put into PDF attachments. Spammers send test runs through ISPs to see what types of spam get through the easiest, said Larry (who refused to disclose his last name) from the spam-fighting SpamHaus Project.