Most people who have had their computers compromised it don’t know it either. So long as the machine works, users don’t care – and security isn’t the first thing to come to their minds either.

According to Vint Cerf, of the 600 million computers that are connected to the internet, up to 150 million are part of botnets, and in most cases the owners of these computers have not the slightest idea what their little beige friend in the study is up to.

Machines operating part of a botnet can do so very subtlety and it is easy to overlook. The processor running harder than it should, slow network connection, etc.

Hollywood has taught us that hackers use viruses that flash big red warning messages to steal government secrets.

Don’t think that your computer at home isn’t valuable to the bad guys – because it is. 150 million machines can attest to that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 10:03 am by Anil Polat and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.