Battle of the Bots: Virus Gang Warfare

[Kristijntje]

There might be a gang fight raging in your bedroom or study right now. There's no gunfire, no blood, and you won’t smell any smoke. But there is a battle. The fight is over your bandwidth and your PC processing power.

Last week, we told you that perhaps as many as 150 million computers connected to the Internet have been hijacked by hackers who use them in high-stakes, big-ticket crimes. Hacker gangs with creepy names like Rustock and Warezov order the armies of infected computers – called bots -- to send out spam or attack Web sites for profit.

They also use these armies to attack each other...

The bot network industry has become so profitable, and hijacked computers so valuable, that rival gangs are now fighting over them...

full article: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/04/virus_g...html#posts