The number of computers currently controlled by botnets has exploded in
recent months, according to researchers.
Recent
figures recorded by the Shadowserver Foundation reveal that the number of
computers infected by botnets has quadrupled in the past 90 days.
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The increase comes despite a slight drop in the number of botnets, leading
researchers to believe that the increase has largely benefited the established
operators in the field.
The increase has also come despite little to no increase in the volume of new
malware and viruses being discovered in the wild.
Some researchers believe that computers are being infected through web-based
attacks, specifically SQL injection.
Sans Institute researcher John Bambenek noted that the increase in botnet
infections seems to coincide with the appearance of
large-scale
SQL injection attacks, in which hundreds of thousands of web pages are
compromised with embedded exploit code.
Bambenek suggested that many security firms lack a mechanism for accurately
rooting out the SQL attacks before they become widespread.
"Short of spidering the web on a consistent basis, it gets difficult to find
infected sites for that malware," he said.
"It is one of the disadvantages of operating in a reactive fashion; we are
behind the power curve for some time until we figure out a way to approach
something close to parity."
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