Botnets are dangerous.  Not only can botnet administrators steal your personal information, but often, on a whim, they can also simply kill your PC.

The controllers of the Zeus/Zbot botnet did just that, hitting the kill switch and BSODing about 100,000 infected PCs.

The Zeus/Zbot botnet first popped up back in March.  It swipes your financial and personal data from your PC via a trojan horse.  Somehow, Zeus also managed to make each installation appear unique to virus scanners so that it would be harder to remove.

Zeus also had a KOS command built-in, otherwise known as "kill operating system" and it was triggered last month.

Why?  No one knows.  Maybe another botnet hijacked Zeus.  Maybe the controllers of Zeus just aren't that bright.

Either way, eventually those systems can be restored and their owners can get back to have their data hacked.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Please Consider Sharing: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Reddit
  • SphereIt
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • YahooBuzz
Sphere: Related Content

Did you enjoy this article? Be sure to subscribe to our news feed. You can also follow us on Twitter.

More Hot Stories!

Related Posts: