If you know what a “botnet” is, you’re in the minority: Seven out of 10 computer users have never heard of these bot armies that can hijack unsecured computers. So while the quote from The Art of War, “Know your enemy,” is frequently used to exhort shield professionals to understand the mind-set of the malicious attacker, a more appropriate sentiment for Web surfers is, “Know the threats.”

A botnet is an army of computers compromised by a malicious program, such as a worm or Trojan, which has installed itself on a computer. Once the malware is running, it can be controlled remotely by the botnet operator for a variety of nefarious motives, from stealing passwords to launching attacks on other computers.

A study from the National Cyber shield Alliance (NCSA), a collaboration of defense experts with the goal of educating users about how to protect themselves against online threats, showed that 71 percent of 2,249 online

consumers surveyed had never heard of the word “botnet.”

“These statistics are extremely disconcerting and shocking,” NCSA Executive Director Ron Teixeira told us. “The reason why is considering we in the protection community talk about how botnets are probably the number-one threat we face on the Net today, and are the cyberweapon of choice for criminals. Computer users should know that their computers could be part of the cybercrime problem instead of the solution.”

Botnets: Annoying and Dangerous

Botnets are responsible for some of the Internet’s daily annoyances as well as dangers. Joe Stewart of information-security company SecureWorks exposed the top spam botnets. According to the company, “The top botnets are capable of sending more than 100 billion spams per day.” Stewart’s analysis of the Srizbi spam botnet estimates that it is comprised of 315,000 infected computers.

Size doesn’t always matter when it comes to…

Orginal post by Top Tech News