Gumblar botnet builder resurfaces with a vengeance
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Though security researchers had believed it to be more or less dormant, the Gumblar malware came storming back into prominence at the turn of the decade, performing what Softpedia calls a "mass injection attack" on computers and websites around the world.
The Mainichi Daily News, a Japanese website, reports that 3,500 instances of Gumblar have been detected by security software and researchers in that country, including on the websites of national political parties, railway companies and convenience store chains.
Softpedia says that FOX Sports' website was among the highest-profile U.S. victims of Gumblar in the latest round of attacks, which carefully scanned potential victims' computers and executed customized exploits to add them to the growing ranks of its botnet, which can be used for DDoS attacks and malicious spam campaigns, among other things.
Experts say that maintaining up-to-date patches on all browsers and other applications can help prevent Gumblar infections, but urge users to browse safely regardless of their level of protection. Other botnets have been more conclusively deactivated, like the Mega-D network that was defeated by security experts last month.
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