Kraken botnet

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As of April 2008, the Kraken botnet, sometimes spelled Kracken[1] is the world's second largest botnet, according to researchers at the computer security company Damballa. They state that Kraken has infected machines in at least 50 of the Fortune 500 companies and has reached the size of over 400,000 bots.[2] It is estimated to send 9 billion spam messages per day. The Kraken botnet virus may have been designed to evade anti-virus software, and is apparently virtually undetectable to conventional anti-virus software.[3]

Joe Stewart, Director of Malware Research at SecureWorks, claims that Kraken is another name for an existing botnet, Bobax, also known as Bobic, Oderoor, Cotmonger, and Hacktool.Spammer.[1] He claims that it is smaller than "Srizbi," a botnet that controls 315,000 computers.[1]

On April 9, Damballa issued a response to claims that Kraken was just another name for Bobax[4]. A week later Damballa released instructions for removing the Kraken malware from computers [5] and a list of IPs comprising the Kraken botnet. The list shows that on April 13, 2008 that were 495,000 computers in the Kraken botnet [6].

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Keizer, Gregg, RSA - Top botnets control 1M hijacked computers, 2008-04-10, retrieved 2008-04-10
  2. ^ New Massive Botnet Twice the Size of Storm, accessed 2008-04-07
  3. ^ Move over Storm - there's a bigger, stealthier botnet in town, accessed 2008-04-07
  4. ^ Royal, Paul, On the Kraken and Bobax Botnets, 2008-04-09, retrieved 2008-04-09
  5. ^ Damballa, Remediating Hosts Compromised by the Kraken BotArmy, 2008-04-16, retrieved 2008-04-16
  6. ^ Damballa, Kraken Information, 2008-04-16, retrieved 2008-04-16

[edit] External links

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