Hi, I'm an Avast user, not regular poster here but I do read a lot of the stuff. Saw this in a free paper we get in the UK, thought it might be worth passing on :-
"At least 4.5million PCs, including 200,000 in Britain, have been hit in just three months.
They are now part of a vast botnet – a network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled without the owners’ knowledge. It has been branded by analysts as the ‘most sophisticated threat today’.
The PCs were captured using a bug called TDL-4 – the latest version of a long-standing malware series, which targets Windows machines and hides itself in hard drives, well away from standard anti-virus programmes.
The creators could stand to make millions by ‘renting’ space on the infected network to other cyber criminals.
They pay small fees to ‘affiliate’ hackers to help spread the botnet and receive between £12 and £120 for every 1,000 installations, which are often conducted via pornographic or ‘bootleg’ sites and video and file storage services.
Kaspersky Lab security researchers claim the hackers are ‘essentially trying to create an indestructible botnet that is protected against attacks, competitors and antivirus companies’.
More than 30 per cent of all victims so far are in the US, with seven per cent in India and five per cent in Britain.
A single group is believed to be behind the botnet, which has its own anti-virus code that scans the infected machine for other malicious programmes and deletes them to see off any rival cyber attackers.
Ram Herkanaidu, from Kaspersky, added: ‘As long as the botnet master gets paid they don’t really mind. It can be used for anything really."
http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/868005-at-least-4-5million-pcs-hit-by-indestructible-tdl-4-botnet
