April 24, 2009

Why are botnets so hard to find

The rise of the botnet has been help by the rise of social networking and other user friendly applications that are appearing on the internet these days.

A user hears of something good or is sent a link to a site that offers a new and exciting way of making friends; they often have to download some software in order to enjoy all of the benefits of this new site.

People have become so used to this that they occasionally fail to remember that there are hackers out there looking to recruit computer to botnets.

This has been made easier because people have become so used to receiving friendship requests and other communications.

These are the reason why botnets are so difficult to defeat:

Operate below the radar
Malware can shield itself
Popular apps are beyond IT’s control
Social networking has widened the attack surface

Source [IT World]