Organized criminals are advertising networks of zombie computers for rent on underground newsgroups and Web pages. When they receive an order for a botnet of a certain size, they set about trying to infect computers using infected email attachments or socially-engineered spam with links to malicious Web pages. As soon as they infect enough computers to fulfill the order, they stop using that particular piece of malware.
“Virus authors are choosing not to create global epidemics--such as Melissa or Blaster--because that distracts them from their core business of creating and selling botnets, according to antivirus experts.
Botnets are groups of computers that have been infected by malware that allows the author to control the infected PCs, and then typically use them to send spam or launch DDoS attacks.
Speaking at the AusCERT conference on Australia's Gold Coast on Tuesday, Eugene Kaspersky, founder of Kaspersky Labs, said that the influence of organised crime on the malware industry has led to a change of tactics, echoing comments made in March of this year by Mikko Hyppönen of F-Secure. Instead of trying to create viruses and worms that infect as many computers as possible, malware authors are instead trying to infect 5,000 or 10,000 computers at a time to create personalized zombie armies.
"Do I need a million computers to send spam? No. To do a DDoS attack, 5,000 or 10,000 PCs is more than enough. That is why virus writers and hackers have changed their tactics of infection--they don't need a global epidemic," said Kaspersky.…”
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5719765.html?tag=nl.e589
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