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back to article Conficker hype obscures sneaky botnet growth

Spammers and other cybercrooks are rebuilding their arsenal of compromised machines after suffering a setback with the takedown of cybercrime-friendly ISP McColo last November. Botherders have taken control of 12 million new IP addresses in the first quarter of 2009, a 50 per cent increase since the last quarter of 2008, …

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  1. Andrew Fraser
    Coat

    Ponder this

    I blame Vista for this... and before you start egging me, let me explain...

    While Vista was/is a steaming pile of crap for many reasons, in a lot of respects it was hardened against malware, to a better extent than XP was.

    Because Vista WAS such a steaming pile of tripe, people held onto their XP boxes much longer, and thus gave a greater pool of boxes to infect with the plague.

    Now that Win 7 has come out, and actually looks like it has legs, hopefully we will start seeing all the older XP boxes start to get replaced, and a slight drop in the pool of pwned machines.

    I know I am dreaming, but its nicer in my dream world, now I will go back to getting my massage from Keria Knightley, and Kate Moss.

    Mines the one with the Win 7 RC 1 DVD in the pocket...

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Oh Gee

    You mean the hype and over reaction to conficker had a down side???? /gasps Say it ain't so?? Wow who would have ever though that would happen? I mean.... Well now that you mention it, anyone with an ounce of common sense who didn't buy into totally ridiculous amount of hype it generated could have told you that.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Volumes

    "Compared with the same quarter a year ago, junk mail volumes are down 20 per cent in Q1 2009"

    No Way! I've observed a nasty surge in Spam hitting my server over Q1 this year. (Having said that, last years logs are long ago archived so can't back that up with stats...)

    I had attributed the surge to this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/14/symantec_threat_report/

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  4. Kanhef
    Boffin

    Numbers

    Claiming large number of IP address infections makes for a good scary headline, but isn't necessarily a good measure of how many actual computers are infected. Recent analysis of the Torpig botnet – by researchers who aren't affiliated with any antivirus vendor – found a roughly 10-to-1 ratio. [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/04/torpig_hijacked/]

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  5. John Smith Gold badge
    Happy

    Any word on the UK's most important infestation?

    That being the Houses of Parliament of course.

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  6. N

    @ UK's most important infestation?

    No but rumour has it Kent has his hand up JSs skirt

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  7. John Smith Gold badge
    Unhappy

    @N

    "No but rumour has it Kent has his hand up JSs skirt"

    And I thought him being hand-in-blouse with her was unpleasant enough.

    *shudder*

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