A new internet relay chat (IRC) bot is building an even larger zombie family that could pose a significant threat to enterprise networks, security researchers said today.

The Nirbot family is based on relatively new code and spreads after receiving instructions from the botmaster inside an IRC channel, said Jose Nazario, senior security and software engineer at Arbor Networks.

"These guys, the botmasters and the bot-writers, are very competitive with each other," Nazario told SCMagazine.com today. "Part of it is pride and ego and part of it is business. By writing their own code base, the guy or these people are showing they want to keep everyone else out."

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