New research shows that the ZeroAcess botnet may command over one millions machines.
The study by Sophos published last week shows the latest version of the malware has infected over 9 million machines in its lifetime. Machine are regularly cleaned up by the users and drop off the network however the numbers are so vast it wont concern the cyber-criminals behind these attacks. The malware is designed for either click fraud or Bitcoin mining and can bring in huge amounts of money.
“If running at maximum capacity, the ZeroAccess botnet is capable of making a staggering amount of money: in excess of $100,000 a day,” Sophos estimates.
ZeroAccess first appeared around two years ago. Previous versions of the malware used URLs associated with the infamous Russian Business Network to spread hard-to-clean and stealthy rootkit functionality.
A map of ZeroAccess botnet infections in Western Europe and the US, compiled by F-Secure, can be found here. ®
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