Kneber Botnet Follows in Conficker's Footsteps

Posted 02/19/2010 at 6:24am | by Paul Lilly

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There's a new botnet in town, and this one has the potential to trump Conficker, says security firm Netwitness, which discovered the botnet. According to Netwitness, the Kneber botnet has already infected more than 74,000 macnines worldwide.

Netwitness describes Kneber as a ZeuS Trojan botnet, and more than half of the systems infected also have the Waledac Trojan, the same worm that was used to create email spam botnets assoicated with Conficker. But unlike Conficker, whose dastardly deeds have yet to be revealed, Netwitness says Kneber has been designed to target and steal login credentials and other private information.

Kneber has been found in 196 countries so far, but is most prominent in Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the U.S. It targets Windows machines, most of which include Windows XP Professional SP2, and most of which reside in corporate and government infrastructures. 

According to Netwitness, Kneber has nabbed some 68,000 login credentials in the past 4 weeks. 

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