Gang of six' controls botnet of 1.9 million computers

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April 22, 2009, 04:14 PM —  IDG News Service — 

Criminals have built a massive "botnet" network of hacked computers that has infected an estimated 1.9 million computers worldwide, including systems within U.S. and U.K. government networks, security vendor Finjan reported Tuesday.

A group of six criminals has run the operation since February, controlling the botnet from a server located in the Ukraine, Finjan said. Using a network of Web sites, they have installed their malware by tricking victims into viewing malicious Web code that then installs the malware.

Nearly half of the computers hacked by the gang are located in the U.S., but they have also hit a sizeable number of machines in the U.K., Canada, Germany and France, Finjan said.

Finjan researchers found "compromised computers in 77 government-owned domains ... from the U.S., U.K., and various other countries," the company said in a statement.

Finjan has contacted institutions that were hacked by the gang and is working with law enforcement on the issue, the company said.

IDG News Service

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Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
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