Fire Sale on Botnet Rentals Makes You Less Safe Online|Protect PC Video| Videos

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Published on November 18th, 2009

The law of supply and demand also applies to hackers and their wares. It has recently been reported that the cost of botnet rental has been slashed in the past few months.

Why?

More malware, infecting more computers creating more and bigger botnets. As with anything else, the greater the supply, the lower the price.

How does it affect you? More spam, more malware, greater vulnerability, not just to you personally, but also to the businesses and institutions you depend on, who are increasingly subject to the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks which are performed by botnets and the criminals who rent them. The return on investment for a botnet rental is increasing. That makes renting them more appealing to more people….and so it goes.

Moral of the story: We’re making it too easy for these guys. Underprotected PC’s are being recruited into botnets at a high and increasing rate.

Comments (1)

Comments

Toni

December 10, 2009

1:13 am

Melih,

I hear you… You Definitely Affected Me! I’ll be heading over to your website to learn more, but 1st, a few words from a very loyal & appreciative customer…

Just now discovering Comodo.TV (this is great). Your presentation helped to clarify how DoS attacks & other threats function to put us at risk (never quite got it till now). Since I suffered a long-term, persistent invasion to a practically brand new home PC (which I wasn’t even aware was compromised till I was in way deep), I have been on a mission to avoid further compromises—& very importantly, to help raise awareness for others, too, as I learn more. The goal is to replace ignorance &/ paralyzing kneejerk-reaction/blind fear with Awareness, Understanding, PREVENTION whenever possible.
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I posted comments at another Comodo.tv video (intro to malware statistics) describing a bit of my hard-earned malware-fighting experience. Using expensive big brand name programs (they know who they are) that mainstream PC mfgrs typically push onto new customers, got me into deeper trouble, I think, because I had a false sense of security—& that’s maybe a half-step above having no security at all! In their place, I’ve been using Comodo products since before Comodo won that great Firewall Competition a couple yrs ago (PC World or PC Mag). CIS Pro (64-bit) has replaced the alphabet soup of anti-malware apps I used to run.
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Also as a result of that awful rootkit/malware experience, I refuse to allow cowardly parasites to destroy or even hinder my enjoyment of the web–& that includes Commerce. Fear of spending money online hurts the economy (everyone’s economy). Always happy to spot the Comodo Trust icon at websites–& would love to see it more often. Have been using Comodo’s VERIFICATION ENGINE & just recently getting acquainted w/the HOPSURF Toolbar in Firefox. The Internet is the greatest of modern marvels & yet it can quickly become a nightmare without adequate security measures.