The earliest worms and viruses were created for geeky fun and did little harm - oh, how times have changed. Here are 20 worms, viruses and botnets that show the evolution of malware, from Creeper to Flame.
A former Rutgers University student and two other men pleaded guilty to computer crimes related to the creation, sale and use of the Mirai botnet, a network of infected electronics equipment used to knock major websites offline in massive 2016 cyber attacks.
A coalition of researchers has revealed details about a joint effort by Akamai, Cloudflare, Flashpoint, Google, Oracle Dyn, RiskIQ, Team Cymru and other organisations to take down the WireX botnet.
The number of DDoS attacks increased by 180 percent during the third quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2014.
Customers of 200 financial institutions in Australia were targeted by botnets between January 2014 and March 2015 according to a new report by Dell SecureWorks.
Telstra will add DNS-based malware suppression to the BigPond network this October, becoming the first ISP in Australia to deploy the technology, the telco has announced.
As fireworks boomed on the Fourth of July, thousands of compromised computers attacked U.S. government Web sites. A botnet of more than 200,000 computers, infected with a strain of 2004's MyDoom virus, attempted to deny legitimate access to sites such as those of the Federal Trade Commission and the White House. The assault was a bold reminder that botnets continue to be a massive problem.
Creators of Waledac malware enlisted the Conficker botnet as a tool to spread malware of their own, marking the first time Conficker was made available for hire, according to Cisco's mid-year security report.This was symptomatic of a wider trend Cisco noted of malware purveyors using established business practices to expand their illegal enterprises. Cisco likened the arrangement between Waledac and Conficker to a partner ecosystem, a term Cisco uses to describe its collaboration with other vendors.
The perpetual proliferation of botnets is hardly surprising when one considers just how easy it is for the bad guys to hijack computers without tipping off the users.<br/>
The ability of malware writers to consistently stay ahead of those seeking to stop them has been a constant factor in the security industry over the past several years.