Kraken botnet evolving, says PC Tools

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 29 April 2008 05:59

Your IT - Home IT

Other characteristics of the malware include the use of encryption and pseudo-random dynamic DNS names to communicate with control centres, and the possible use of MSN Messenger as well as email to spread itself (using sef-extracting files masked as JPEG images).

According to some reports, Kraken has built the world's largest botnet. Earlier this month, security vendor Damballa claimed that over 400,000 computers had fallen victim.

"We've observed evidence of Kraken-based compromises in at least 50 of the Fortune 500,” said Paul Royal, principal researcher at Damballa.

Company officials predicted the number would rise to over 600,000 by mid-April, and noted that a infected computer had been seen to send as many as half a million spam emails in one day.

PC Tools officials say fresh infections have recently been detected in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australasia and Africa.