Comments on: Explaining Botnets

By: Artie Gains

Artie Gains — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 07:32:04 +0000

At least botnets should be relatively easy to catch – they are so noisy (i.e. they use so many resources) that one must be blind not to notice them. This isn’t unimportant, having in mind how stealth some of the other dangerous types of malware are.

By: Emmanuel Carabott

Emmanuel Carabott — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:57:28 +0000

Yes I agree Tiffany, preventing one intrusion will probably pay for any extra cost you might ever incur in hiring a good network administrator!

By: Tiffany Pria

Tiffany Pria — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:40:14 +0000

Botnets are NOT only dangerous, they are also financial disasters. Many small, medium, and large businesses are the favorite targets of botnets for an obvious reason – to steal sensitive information and data and sell to others (to competitors, spammers, etc).

As a business owner myself, updating your OS, virus database, and programs to the latest version will not be enough. You must be vigilant and knowledgeable also.

If you have or if you are running a company (whether it’s small, medium, or large), you must hire an excellent network administrator and / or IT manager. They maybe expensive, but I always believe that prevention is better that cure.

By: Emmanuel Carabott

Emmanuel Carabott — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:21:38 +0000

Off the top of my head I am not aware of actual legal action against victims of botnets; however, these things can be tricky in that when such legal action is taken the victim will be sued for the action taken by the botnet (DDOS attack, hacking attempts etc..) so it might be tricky to find such examples.

I am, however, aware of a case where a botnet introduced a malware onto a victim’s computer, the malware piggybacked a legitimate transaction on the online bank of the victim and transfered the money from that account to the attacker’s account. The bank was unable to reverse the transfer and refused to refund the victim claiming that it was their responsibility to keep their computer safe.

By: Tony Wescott

Tony Wescott — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 10:56:13 +0000

Good advice, it’s staggering to think how many people are unwittingly part of a botnet without even realizing it. I think if more people were aware of the enormity of the risks and how common botnet infection is, they wouldn’t be so reckless with their computer security. Is there any legal precedent for those infected with a botnet being included as a defendant for legal action?