Malicious Software Infects Computers
By JOHN MARKOFF The New York Times February 19, 2010
A malicious software program has infected the computers of more than
2,500 corporations around the world, according to NetWitness, a computer network security firm.The malicious program, or botnet, can commandeer the operating systems of both residential and corporate computing systems via the Internet. Such botnets are used by computer criminals for a range of illicit activities, including sending e-mail spam and stealing digital documents and passwords from infected computers. In many cases they install so-called keystroke loggers to capture personal information.
The current infection is modest compared with some of the largest known botnets. For example, a system known as Conficker, created in late 2008, infected as many as 15 million computers at its peak and continues to contaminate more than seven million systems globally.
Botnet attacks are not unusual. Currently Shadowserver, an organization that tracks botnet activity, is monitoring 5,900 separate botnets.
Several computer security specialists also disputed the company's assertion that the botnet was a novel discovery. This type of infection is well known to the computer security research community and is routinely tracked by a monitoring system that has identified more than 1,300 botnets of this design.
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