Security company Damballa has released a botnet threat report for 2010 and it isn’t pleasant reading. According to the report there has been a dramatic increase in Internet crime and targeted botnet attacks during 2010. At its peak the total number of unique botnet victims grew by nearly 700%, with an average incremental growth of 8% per week.
Damballa credit the increase in the number of botnets to the increased popularity of do-it-yourself (DIY) botnet construction kits and exploit packs (as 60% of the 2010 botnets didn’t exist in 2009), coupled with the effectiveness of the TDL master-boot-record (MBR) rootkit technology.
According to Damballa the top ten botnets for 2010 were:
- TDLBotnetA (RudeWarlockMob)
- RogueAVBotnet (FreakySpiderCartel)
- ZeusBotnetB (FourLakeRiders)
- Monkif
- Koobface.A
- Conficker.C
- Hamweq (GraySunGirls)
- AdwareTrojanBotnet (WickedRockMonsters)
- Sality
- SpyEyeBotnetA (OneStreetTroop)
Damballa’s report is on par with a report issued recently by the EU’s statistics office which revealed that nearly a third of PCs in Europe were infected with a virus in 2010.
