Botnets and the Shadowserver Foundation

In December 2006, the number of botnets decreased due to alot of people buying a new PC. So alot of infected PC's disappeared. Good news.
The bad news is that in these last two weeks, 800.000 new PC's joined various botnets. That's tripple the amount it was last months. Courtesy of the Shadowserver Foundation



The Shadowserver Foundation is an all volunteer watchdog group of security professionals that gather, track, and report on malware, botnet activity, and electronic fraud. It is the mission of the Shadowserver Foundation to improve the security of the Internet by raising awareness of the presence of compromised servers, malicious attackers, and the spread of malware.

Nothing explains this sudden increase. I'm a bit afraid of the repercussions of this phenomenon. Botnets can be used for all sorts of malicious activity like spam & DDoS. Just like the attack on the internet DNS system last month. Spam is already on a all time high of 85% of all traffic and rising to 90%. Incredible and sad.

We have to educate people. Try more diverse operating system. Try more then one browser. Use a firewall and anti-virus software! My recommendation is to use Firefox with the NoScript plugin. Especially since it's becoming easier and easier to hijack your PC through a webbrowser!