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May 11, 2007, 11:00 AM ET
Invasion of the Botnets: a New Security Nightmare
One of the most serious threats to the Internet today is the botnet, a network of machines that has been taken over by an invader with malicious intent. But these bots come from a central point, a place against which defenders can launch countermeasures.
But a new twist adds new danger: distributed, or "peer to peer" botnets, with no central command post to attack. And these botnets are on the rise, according to a report from researchers presented at last month's Hotbots '07 workshop, newly available online. Like cells in a terrorist network, the researchers say, peer-to-peer botnets are a series of independent nodes; if one of them is taken out, the others move to fill in the gap. "There has been a recent trend in increased development of peer-to-peer botnets, and we expect the level of sophistication to increase," the scientists warn. --Josh Fischman
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