Windows Attacks Skyrocket, Bot Networks Breed Like Minks

During the first half of the year, Symantec's global network of 20,000 sensors documented nearly 4,500 worms and viruses that targeted Windows, an increase that took even the company's researchers by surprise. "We knew that the number was up [over 2003], but the sheer size of the increase was a big shock once we looked at the data," said Alfred Huger, Symantec's senior director of engineering for its security response team.

In an associated trend, the bulk of those Windows-attacking worms and viruses came with a backdoor component. Such backdoors, like those deployed by worms as varied as MyDoom and Bagle, are becoming standard fare in malicious attacks. "The vast majority of these worms come with a backdoor to create a spam proxy or monitor transactional data or steal credit card data," said Huger.

In turn, the "popularity" of backdoors led to an upsurge in the number of bots and bot networks in the first half of 2004. According to Symantec, the number of monitored bots -- compromised computers that can be controlled by an attacker, then used for almost any task, including denial-of-service attacks or sending spam -- climbed from around 2,000 per day at the start of the year to more than 30,000 per day by its mid-point, with spikes as high as 75,000.

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