|
Dutch Botnet Bigger Than Expected |
|
|
|
Source: Information Week - Posted by Pax Dickinson
|
Dutch prosecutors who last month arrested a trio of young men for creating a large botnet allegedly used to extort a U.S. company, steal identities, and distribute spyware now say they bagged bigger prey: a botnet of 1.5 million machines.
According to Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the Public Prosecution Service (Openbaar Ministerie, or OM), when investigators at GOVCERT.NL, the Netherlands' Computer Emergency Response Team, and several Internet service providers began dismantling the botnet, they discovered it consisted of about 1.5 million compromised computers, 15 times the 100,000 PCs first thought.
The three suspects, ages 19, 22, and 27, were arrested Oct. 6 on charges of threatening a U.S. firm with a denial-of-service (DoS) attack after Amsterdam-based Internet service provider XS4ALL notified authorities of unusual activity on its network. The two younger men are still in custody -- a Breda court just extended their incarceration by 30 days -- but the 27-year-old has been released pending trial, said the OM.
Read this full article at Information Week
Powered by AkoComment! |
