January 11, 2008 3:27 PM PST
Security Bites Podcast: Here come the HTTP botnets
Listen Now
Robert Vamosi talks with Arbor Networks' Jose Nazario about a new type of botnet--one that uses HTTP requests.
Listen to more episodes of this podcast at the Security Bites podcast archive.
Subscribe to this podcast
Subscribe to the podcast rss feed,
This week, CNET's Robert Vamosi talks with Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks about the emergence of a new type of botnet: HTTP-controlled botnets.
Botnets are distributed networks of compromised computers that can be used to distribute malicious software, to relay spam, or to shut down large Web sites via denial-of-service attacks. In order to do this, the botnet needs instructions. Typically, these come from IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels, which send out the command and control instructions to the compromised machines. This, of course, can be tracked--and can result in the botnets being shut down. Last year, Nazario and others found that peer-to-peer networks were being used to issue the command and control instructions. This also can be tracked, resulting in the botnet being shut down.
In this podcast, Nazario discusses a third method of issuing command and control instructions, one that uses HTTP requests.
Continue the discussion
