Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer - NYTimes.com
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:18:22 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh () hserus net> Date: October 22, 2008 8:54:02 AM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Cc: rsk () gsp orgSubject: Re: [IP] Re: A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer - NYTimes.com
Communication gap here. The article is (though the reporter may not quite realize it) talking about the size of an individual botnet, not the total
number of botted hosts in the world (whose number is legion..) I wrote a paper on it earlier this year - http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/cyb/cybersecurity/docs/itu-botnet-mitigation-toolkit-background.pdf srs David Farber [22/10/08 08:38 -0400]:
Begin forwarded message: From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org> Date: October 22, 2008 8:09:15 AM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net>Subject: Re: [IP] A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer - NYTimes.comOn Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 03:27:14AM -0400, David Farber quoted:Botnets remain an Internet scourge. Active zombie networks created by agrowing criminal underground peaked last month at more than half amillion computers, according to shadowserver.org, an organization that tracks botnets. Even though security experts have diminished the botnetsto about 300,000 computers, that is still twice the number detected a year ago.The actual numbers may be far larger; Microsoft investigators, who say they are tracking about 1,000 botnets at any given time, say the largestnetwork still controls several million PCs.Any estimate of zombied systems under 100 million is woefully out- of- date.(Note that people like Vint Cerf have suggested considerably highernumbers, and I concur with their estimates.) Even a tiny system seededwith appropriate traps should be able to detect several million uniquesystems a month, and of course that represents just a peek at the largerpopulation. ---Rsk ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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Current thread:
- A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer - NYTimes.com David Farber (Oct 21)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer - NYTimes.com David Farber (Oct 22)
- Re: A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer - NYTimes.com David Farber (Oct 22)