FBI nabs two more over botnets

Stephen Withers
Friday, 15 June 2007 08:26

Your IT - Home IT

Another two botherders have been charged or arrested as a result of the US Department of Justice and FBI's 'Operation Bot Roast' aimed at curbing the operations of people running botnets.

The FBI alleges that James C Brewer of Arlington, Texas, has operated a botnet tens of thousands of computers worldwide including many at Chicago area hospitals, while Jason Michael Downey of Covington, Kentucky, has been charged with using a botnet to launch a denial of service (DoS).

A botnet is a collection of computers that have been infected with malware that allows then to be harnessed for misdeeds such as phishing, spamming, and generating denial of service (DoS) attacks. DoS attacks work by instructing a large number of computers to simultaneously access the same server, preventing it from operating normally. Few, if any, web sites can withstand traffic at the volumes generated by a large botnet during a such an attack.

A botnet operator is known as a botherder.

"The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited," said James Finch, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division.

Earlier this year, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf suggested between 100 and 150 million of the 600 million computers on the Internet were already part of botnets.

The FBI is working with the CERT Coordination Center to inform the owners of more than one million computers that known to have been conscripted into botnets. "The FBI will not contact you online and request your personal information so be wary of fraud schemes that request this type of information, especially via unsolicited emails," Bureau officials warned.

"Citizens can protect themselves from botnets and the associated schemes by practicing strong computer security habits to reduce the risk that your computer will be compromised," added Finch.

Such habits presumably include keeping operating systems and applications up to date with the latest security patches, using up to date firewalls and anti-malware software, ignoring emails directing you to dodgy sites, and using tools that warn of unsafe results from search engines.

"Spam king" Robert Alan Soloway was arrested late last month and faces charges relating to his alleged use of a botnet to send large quantities of spam.