October 1st Cybersecurity Update – Botnet

A botnet infecting nearly two million computers has been hit hard by the good guys. ZeroAccess is one of the largest known botnets. Criminals use it for various frauds to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year. Cybersecurity vendor Symantec found a way to disconnect 25 percent of the machines controlled by ZeroAccess. Computerworld reports, researchers were able to exploit a design weakness in the peer-to-peer architecture of the botnet. Before the cyber thieves could patch the flaw, Symantec performed a procedure called sinkholing. That prevented the owners from regaining control of the infected machines.

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