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The  European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) , Europe's Cyber security agency, issued a report focused on botnets this week titled, " Botnets: Measurement, Detection, Disinfection and Defence. " The report discusses the reliability of botnet size estimates and provides recommendations and strategies to help organizations fight against botnets. In addition, ENISA published a list of what it considers the top 10 key issues for policymakers in ' Botnets: 10 Tough Questions. ' The 154 page " Botnets: Measurement, Detection, Disinfection and Defence " report includes different types of best practices to measure, detect and defend against botnets from all angles. The countermeasures are divided into 3 main areas: neutralizing existing botnets, preventing new infections and minimizing the profitability of cybercrime using botnets. The recommendations cover legal, policy and technical aspects of the fight against botnets and give targeted recommendations

Botnets - a secretly compromised networks of ordinary home and office computers with rogue software or "malware" that are controlled by an individual criminal or a group - has dramatically increased over the past several years and are considered to pose the biggest threat to the Internet. Cyber criminals have brushed-up their hacking skills and are using Botnets as a cyber weapon to carry out multiple crimes like DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service), mass spamming, page rank and advertising revenue manipulation, mining bitcoins, cyber espionage and surveillance etc. 18 BOTNET INFECTIONS PER SECOND According to the director of FBI's cyber division, Joseph Demarest, Botnet has become one of the biggest enemies of the Internet today, and therefore its impact has been significant. Yesterday during a hearing before a U.S. Senate committee, he says that every second 18 computers worldwide are part of botnet armies, which amounts to over 500 million comp

The need for vCISO services is growing. SMBs and SMEs are dealing with more third-party risks, tightening regulatory demands and stringent cyber insurance requirements than ever before. However, they often lack the resources and expertise to hire an in-house security executive team. By outsourcing security and compliance leadership to a vCISO, these organizations can more easily obtain cybersecurity expertise specialized for their industry and strengthen their cybersecurity posture. MSPs and MSSPs looking to meet this growing vCISO demand are often faced with the same challenge. The demand for cybersecurity talent far exceeds the supply. This has led to a competitive market where the costs of hiring and retaining skilled professionals can be prohibitive for MSSPs/MSPs as well. The need to maintain expertise of both security and compliance further exacerbates this challenge. Cynomi, the first AI-driven vCISO platform , can help. Cynomi enables you - MSPs, MSSPs and consulting firms

The  Internet of Things (IoT)  is transforming efficiency in various sectors like healthcare and logistics but has also introduced new security risks, particularly IoT-driven DDoS attacks. This article explores how these attacks work, why they're uniquely problematic, and how to mitigate them. What Is IoT? IoT (Internet of Things) refers to online, interconnected devices that collect and exchange data. This broad category of devices includes sensors, cameras, network routers, and advanced machinery, and their integration into everyday life and work processes results in an ecosystem that can automate operations, improve decision-making, and enhance user experience. IoT: A Breeding Ground for Botnets IoT's rapid adoption amplifies its vulnerability, as poorly secured devices become easy prey for attackers and may become part of a botnet. Controlled by attackers, botnets can scale and rapidly execute various attacks, including DDoS, data theft, ad fraud, cryptocurrency mining, spam a

Cybercriminals are busy innovators, adapting their weapons and attack strategies, and ruthlessly roaming the web in search of their next big score. Every manner of sensitive information, such as confidential employee records, customers' financial data, protected medical documents, and government files, are all subject to their relentless threats to cybersecurity . Solutions span a broad spectrum, from training email users to ensuring a VPN kill switch is in place, to adding extensive advanced layers of network protection. To successfully guard against severe threats from hackers, worm viruses to malware, such as botnet attacks, network managers need to use all tools and methods that fit well into a comprehensive cyber defense strategy. Of all the menaces mentioned above to a website owner's peace of mind, botnets arguably present the most unsettling form of security risk. They're not the mere achievements of malicious amateur cybercriminals. They're state

EU cyber security agency ENISA has warned that ISPs, end users and governments all have a role to play in stopping the global menace of botnet-related cyber crime. Botnets, such as the one that uses the infamous Zeus malware to infect machines, are growing in scope and scale, and ENISA has released two reports in which it attempts to understand the root of the problem and how to tackle it. The security agency warned that combating botnet attacks will take a co-ordinated response and should only be tackled after careful consideration of their impact and motivation. "The botnet numbers define the political agenda and they determine hundreds of millions of euros of security investments. We should understand what is behind them," said Giles Hogben, the report editor. "Size is not everything - the number of infected machines alone is an inappropriate measure of the threat." ENISA's main report, Botnets: Measurement, Detection, Disinfection and Defence (PDF) is a

Though we are recovering from the worst pandemic, cyber threats have shown no sign of downshifting, and cybercriminals are still not short of malicious and advanced ways to achieve their goals.  The  Global Threat Landscape Report  indicates a drastic rise in sophisticated cyberattacks targeting digital infrastructures, organizations, and individuals in 2021. Threats can take different forms with the intent to commit fraud and damage businesses and people. Ransomware,  DDoS attacks , phishing, malware, and man-in-the-middle attacks represent the greatest threat to businesses today. When new threats emerge, attackers take advantage of them – however, most businesses are only aware of the current threats. Organizations struggle to address these threats due to their resource sophistication and their lack of understanding of evolving threat landscapes. For these reasons, organizations need visibility on the advanced threats especially targeting their infrastructure. This article will o

ESET, a security solution provider for viruses and malicious software, has released its cyber-threat report for 2011, predicting that attacks on Facebook and other social networks will increase over the coming year. The report prepared by specialists and searchers in the business also says the mentioned attacks' main purpose will be to steal data, also known as 'phishing' Attacks on Facebook and other social networks are likely to increase over the coming year, according to a report from ESET, an IT security company, on possible threat trends for 2011. Social media will be a focus for social engineering attacks such as those already commonly experienced by users of Facebook and Google, according to ESET's new San Diego-based Cyber Threat Analysis Center, or CTAC. Furthermore, it is likely there will be an increasing volume of attacks on other social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Orkut and Twitter, as well as other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo, the research

The Russian man who was accused of operating the infamous Kelihos botnet has finally pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court. Peter Yuryevich Levashov , 38, of St. Petersburg, Russia, pleaded guilty on Wednesday in U.S. federal court in Connecticut to computer crime, wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft charges. Levashov, also known by many online aliases including Peter Severa, Petr Levashov, Petr Severa and Sergey Astakhov, has admitted of operating several botnets, including the Storm, Waledac and Kelihos botnets, since the late 1990s until he was arrested in April 2017 . Kelihos botnet, dated back to 2010, was a global network of tens of thousands of infected computers that were used to steal login credentials, send bulk spam emails, and infect computers with ransomware and other malware. Russian Hacker Infects 50,000 Computers With Kelihos Botnet Storm and Waledac botnets also shared Kelihos code, but kelihos was the most notorious botnet of all that alone infect

Microsoft and the FBI have taken down a botnet that controlled millions of infected PCs, which was responsible for massive bank fraud.  Botnets are networks of computers infected with viruses that let them be controlled by hackers. The outfit runs the Citadel Botnets and is believed to have stolen more than $500 million from bank accounts over the past 18 months. Citadel is one of the biggest botnets in operation today. Citadel is a banking Trojan that has been in existence since 2011. As with most banking Trojans, Citadel is a full crimeware kit, providing the attackers with payload builders, a command and control (C&C) server infrastructure, and configuration scripts to target various banks. Citadel infected as many as 5 million PCs around the world including here in Australia and according to Microsoft, was used to steal from dozens of financial institutions, including American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, eBay's PayPal, HSBC, JPM

THOR : Another P2P Botnet in development with extra stealth features The research community is now focusing on the integration of peer-to-peer (P2P) concepts as incremental improvements to distributed malicious software networks (now generically referred to as botnets). Because "botnets" can be used for illicit financial gain,they have become quite popular in recent Internet attacks. A " botnet " is a network of computers that are compromised and controlled by an attacker. Each computer is infected witha malicious program called a "bot", which actively communicates with other bots in the botnet or with several "botcontrollers" to receive commands from the botnet owner. Attackers maintain complete control of their botnets, andcan conduct Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks,email spamming, keylogging, abusing online advertisements, spreading new malware, etc. However, the first botnets that use peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for remote control of the compromised machines appeare

Several distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnets have been observed exploiting a critical flaw in Zyxel devices that came to light in April 2023 to gain remote control of vulnerable systems. "Through the capture of exploit traffic, the attacker's IP address was identified, and it was determined that the attacks were occurring in multiple regions, including Central America, North America, East Asia, and South Asia," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said . The flaw, tracked as CVE-2023-28771 (CVSS score: 9.8), is a command injection bug affecting multiple firewall models that could potentially allow an unauthorized actor to execute arbitrary code by sending a specifically crafted packet to the targeted appliance. Last month, the Shadowserver Foundation  warned  that the flaw was being "actively exploited to build a Mirai-like botnet" at least since May 26, 2023, an indication of how abuse of  servers running unpatched software  is on the rise.

You might be surprised to know that your security cameras, Internet-connected toasters and refrigerators may have inadvertently participated in the massive cyber attack that broke a large portion of the Internet on Friday. That's due to massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against Dyn, a major domain name system (DNS) provider that many sites and services use as their upstream DNS provider for turning IP addresses into human-readable websites. The result we all know: Twitter, GitHub, Amazon, Netflix, Pinterest, Etsy, Reddit, PayPal, and AirBnb, were among hundreds of sites and services that were rendered inaccessible to Millions of people worldwide for several hours. Why and How the Deadliest DDoS Attack Happened It was reported that the Mirai bots were used in the massive DDoS attacks against DynDNS, but they "were separate and distinct" bots from those used to execute record-breaking DDoS attack against French Internet service and hosting