14 DAY TRIAL // The botnets evolve every day as more users fail to protect themselves and their computers, helping the attackers expand their malicious attempts. Today, ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, released a report concerning the botnets, revealing that China, US, Germany, Spain and France are the top 5 infected countries when it comes to this kind of threat installed on residents' computers. Moreover, the agency reports that approximately 6 million systems worldwide might represent important components of large botnets. According to the report, most users got themselves infected after they are assaulted by browser exploits, 65 percent of the consumers becoming victims of botnets attempts after this kind of attack.
13 percent of the users fail to protect their computers against e-mail attachments, while 11 percent of the botnets systems come from operating system exploits. In addition, 9 percent of the infected users claim that they were attacked by the files they had downloaded from the web.
"Currently, the most dangerous infection method is surfing to an infected webpage. Indications of a bot on your computer include e.g.: Slow Internet connection, strange browser behavior (home page change, new windows, unknown plug-ins), disabled anti-virus software; unknown autostart programs etc," ENISA noted in the report.
Obviously, we all need powerful technologies to block these attacks and protect our computers from becoming important components of the large malicious botnets. "ENISA therefore calls for a more coordinated, cross country cooperation among multi-national law enforcement agencies, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and software vendors. More structure and more resources are needed. Education of the everyday user in detecting malicious activity in their computers is a key measure," the agency continued.
The botnets are large networks, containing infected computers from all over the world, which can be used by the attackers to conduct attacks over a certain target. Since they are usually installed without users' approval, only some of the consumers discover the infection and manage to stop and remove it from the computer.