Why So Little Attention to Botnets?

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

Ed Felten writes over on Freedom to Tinker:

[snip]

Our collective battle against botnets is going badly, according to Ryan
Naraine’s recent article in eWeek.

What’s that? You didn’t know we were battling botnets? You’re not
alone. Though botnets are a major cause of Internet insecurity
problems, few netizens know what they are or how they work.

In this context, a “bot” is a malicious software agent that gets
installed on an unsuspecting user’s computer. Bots get onto computers
by exploiting security flaws. Once there, they set up camp and wait
unobtrusively for instructions. Bots work in groups, called “botnets”,
in which many thousands of bots (hundreds of thousands, sometimes) all
over the Net work together at the instruction of a remote badguy.

[snip]

Worth a read.

More:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1079

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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