Botnets increasingly wielded for ideological uses
- Wednesday, 10 February 2010 16:08
Botnets, or networks of zombie computers that mount attacks with malicious software against other computers, continue to be a moving target for network protection services. A recent report from Prolexic Technologies describes some of the new strategies that botnets are using to take down their targets in attacks that are increasingly of a political bent.
The Prolexic report focuses on the increase of DDoS attacks, where multiple computers overload the available bandwidth of a system through methods such as IP spoofing or DNS request floods. Botnets like BlackEnergy typically mount attacks consisting of between 1 and 7 Gbps of straightforward requests on the system by computers under its control, but Prolexic has found that the size and techniques of the attacks are changing.
