Your Daily Computer Security Tips

Researchers at security company Prevx in England have stumbled across a Web site that was being used as a storehouse for data stolen from some 160,000 infected computers. The heist was done with a botnet. It provides us with a rare glimpse of what happens after your computer is infected with a robot network, or botnet.

There are many sites like this around the Internet. The researchers got into this one because it had poor encryption, even as it hoovered up data from 5,000 newly compromised computers every day.

The data includes passwords, bank login credentials, emails and Social Security Numbers. A California user was logged ordering a pizza online. His credit card, birth date, password, etc. are all on file now, sitting on the criminal’s server in the Ukraine.

Prevx notified the ISP and the Ukrainian police, as well as the FBI and UK authorities. At last report, the site is still up and running along merrily.

The researchers say it is getting easier for even amateur, low-skilled crooks to operate these botnets, and they are therefore becoming more numerous. Get yourself a botnet scanner here, and run it regularly (it only takes a minute to scan).

This scanner is still in beta testing, and can be a bit cranky sometimes. Give it a try anyway. You do not want the grief, frustration, and lost time and money that can occur following a botnet infection.