Kneber botnet Virus attack compromises 75,000 computers
By Partho, Gaea News NetworkThursday, February 18, 2010
In one of the massive security breaches ever almost 75000 systems have been compromised in Virus attack. According to security researchers atInternet security firm NetWitness, it is a botnet affecting 2500 organizations around the world, including user accounts of popular social network websites. The virus named as Kneber botnet, has been gathering login credentials of online financial systems, social networking sites and e-mail systems from infected computers for the past 18 months, as reported by NetWitness.
investigation by the Herndon, Virginia-based software security revealed that several commercial and government agencies have been compromised that includes 68,000 corporate login credentials and access to email systems, online banking sites, Yahoo, Hotmail and social networks such as Facebook.
NetWitness is yet to release the names of the companies compromised under the attacks. However, according to the story in the Wall Street Journal the anticipated companies under attack include pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., Cardinal Health Inc., Paramount Pictures and Juniper Networks Inc.
Ringing the alarm bells, Chief Executive Amit Yoran said Herndon
Conventional malware protection and signature-based intrusion detection systems are, by definition, inadequate for addressing Kneber or most other advanced threat
The attacks are carried out by highly organized state-sponsored groups and organized cybergangs with deep technical skills and computing resources. These are highly perilous as they are highly targeted, customized and repeated.
