infoseeker
August 23rd, 2006, 02:11 AM
New exploit.........:icon_scra
Malicious code that exploits a recent Windows hole has led to significant growth in the number of hijacked PCs, according to messaging security company CipherTrust.
On Tuesday, CipherTrust reported a 23 percent growth in the total number of so-called zombie PCs it has detected. The jump is due to the spread of Mocbot worm variants, CipherTrust said. Mocbot, also known as Cuebot and Graweg, exploits a Windows security flaw for which Microsoft issued a patch with security bulletin MS06-040 on Aug. 8.
"Around Aug. 13, the weekend after Black Tuesday, we started seeing a gradual increase in the average number of new zombies," said Dmitri Alperovitch, a research scientist at CipherTrust in Alpharetta, Ga. "It went up from 214,000 every day in the previous week to 265,000 every day."
Any computer infected by Mocbot will become part of a botnet, a large network of compromised PCs that can be controlled remotely to carry out tasks such as sending spam. In June, Microsoft warned that the threat posed by botnets and zombies was growing fast.
Complete (http://news.com.com/Worm+sparks+rise+in+zombie+PCs/2100-7349_3-6108409.html?tag=nefd.top)
Malicious code that exploits a recent Windows hole has led to significant growth in the number of hijacked PCs, according to messaging security company CipherTrust.
On Tuesday, CipherTrust reported a 23 percent growth in the total number of so-called zombie PCs it has detected. The jump is due to the spread of Mocbot worm variants, CipherTrust said. Mocbot, also known as Cuebot and Graweg, exploits a Windows security flaw for which Microsoft issued a patch with security bulletin MS06-040 on Aug. 8.
"Around Aug. 13, the weekend after Black Tuesday, we started seeing a gradual increase in the average number of new zombies," said Dmitri Alperovitch, a research scientist at CipherTrust in Alpharetta, Ga. "It went up from 214,000 every day in the previous week to 265,000 every day."
Any computer infected by Mocbot will become part of a botnet, a large network of compromised PCs that can be controlled remotely to carry out tasks such as sending spam. In June, Microsoft warned that the threat posed by botnets and zombies was growing fast.
Complete (http://news.com.com/Worm+sparks+rise+in+zombie+PCs/2100-7349_3-6108409.html?tag=nefd.top)