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Thursday, January 26, 2006
Bots Nearly Triple In 2005
The number of bots released in 2005 was almost triple that of the year before, Madrid-based Panda Software, spotlighting the growing problem of PC hijacking. That’s not surprising, considering the large number of variations attackers crank out for some bot families. The Gaobot clan (also dubbed “Agobot”) alone spun off more than 6,000 variants last year. Botnets, which are typically controlled by a “herder,” or handler, can be composed of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of contaminated PCs.
The first arrest of a botnet herder in the U.S. occurred in November 2005, when Jeanson James Ancheta, 20, of California, was accused of accumulating 400,000 bots. Ancheta pleaded guilty to several federal felony counts Monday, and faces up to 25 years in prison.