Spider Webs and Botnets

A while back I wrote about Bugs and Spiders that had reference to a humongous spiderweb. Now those spiders are at it again and are busy spinning a second spiderweb across the lake from the first web. It really makes me wonder what the heck is going on with those spiders? Scary to most people, including me, but fascinating to 'spider people'.

Another scary thing that's going on is in the cyber-world, a 'botnet'. This botnet is a web of computers that have been infected by a nasty piece of malware known as Storm. In February the estimate number of compromised computers was over a million. Since February there have been several onslaughts of phishing emails designed to entrap the un-educated into visiting websites that once visited; secretly installed the worm (or Trojan Horse) known as Storm. This storm worm then added more and more of these zombie computers to the botnet.

The problems with this botnet are many. First, no one knows who is behind it, so there is no way law enforcement can stop it. The infected computers can be used to send out spam emails and other nefarious stuff. They can be used to steal the identity of the computer users, who have no idea their computer is infected. You can read more about all of this on Storm: The Largest Botnet in the World? Keep in mind this article was written back in February. It's a lot worse by now!

About two months ago most of us received a lot of messages telling us we had received an egreeting card from someone. The messages varied; the subject could say it was from a school-mate, family member, etc. It could have said it was a greeting card, an ecard, postcard, etc. but every one of the messages told you to go to a website to collect your greeting and if you did, guess what; you got worms! If you had updated anti-virus it may have protected you, but then again, maybe not!

Then came another little jewel in email that went something like this:

"Greetings, Here is your membership info for Cat Lovers."

Then it went on to provide you with a login and password. This little missive was intended to catch more unsuspecting users and give them a little 'stormy' present!

So as much as I fear spiders (and their webs), I am much more afraid of the enormous web known as a botnet! You should be afraid as well!

Martha