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It was reported more than six million computers were taken over by infectious programs known as botnets. These infected computers are used at will by crime groups to perform a variety of illegal activities. They range from stealing users’ identities and confidential information like bank account numbers and passwords to sending out massive amounts of spam e-mail. They also can conduct DOS (denial of service) attacks, phishing attacks and other illegal activities.



A bot is a computer whose operation has been secretly hijacked by malware. The infected computer, which is often referred to as a “zombie,” has a Trojan program which directs the computer to connect to a remote location to download additional instructions. A group of hijacked computers forms a botnet. Much like a real computer network tethered together under the control of a systems manager, botnets are under the control of a bot herder or bot master. The zombie operator can see anything on the infected computer, including documents, passwords and social security numbers.

Hijacked computers start with uninformed or unconcerned consumers. They buy a new computer with one or more trial versions of antivirus protection. When the initial subscription lapses, the consumer often fails to renew. Most people choose not to continue the antivirus protection because they don’t want to give credit card information over the Internet or don’t think it is necessary some fail to renew because they either do not care or think that the computer will remain protected against virus infections without updating signatures.

The result is the computer quickly becomes infected with viruses distributed by e-mail and from visiting an infected Web site. It is practically impossible to avoid virus infections unless the computer user never receives e-mail and never surfs the Web.

This new reliance by malware writers on using infected Web sites is happening without the knowledge or intervention of the Web site owners. There are 8,000 Web sites a day hosting new viruses. Other types of Internet-based infections require the Web visitor to actually click on an image.Secure Computing recently discovered a new malware tactic that will soon be adding to botnet troubles. A so-called zlob is complex, tricky and deceptive. The zlob poses as a fake video file posted on YouTube. It contains a second bit of code that causes the movie to download onto the PC. It then installs two Trojans that bombard visitors with ads. Currently, the only payload is the ad blitz more dangerous malware will attached to this exploit soon. The zlob can very easily be an e-mail vehicle capable of hundreds of variants of zlobs.

This newly-discovered form of Web-based malware is currently masquerading as a YouTube video object and does not require users to download an .EXE file in order to run. No one expects to find malware hidden in YouTube files.

Up-to-date anti virus protection maintained on individual computers prevents much of the malware from attacking consumer and enterprise computers. But more protection is needed for the zero-day infections. These attacks come from new viruses that enter a computer before new signature detection is distributed by antivirus vendors.