http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10462718-245.html By Elinor Mills InSecurity Complex CNet News March 2, 2010 Authorities in Spain have arrested three men accused of operating a massive botnet composed of 12.7 million PCs that stole credit card and bank log-in data and infected computers in half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 banks, according to published reports. The botnet "Mariposa," which means butterfly in Spanish, first appeared in December 2008 and grew to be one of the largest botnets ever, The Associated Press reported. It spread the Butterfly worm via removable drives, MSN Messenger, and peer-to-peer programs and targets Windows XP and older systems. Unlike many underground hackers, the alleged ringleaders of the operation were not skilled programmers, but had contacts who were, authorities said. "They're not like these people from the Russian mafia or Eastern European mafia who like to have sports cars and good watches and good suits--the most frightening thing is they are normal people who are earning a lot of money with cybercrime," Cesar Lorenza, a captain with Spain's Guardia Civil, which is investigating the case, told the news service. [...] ___________________________________________________________ Register now for HITBSecConf2010 - Dubai, the premier deep-knowledge network security event in the GCC, featuring keynote speakers John Viega and Matt Watchinski! http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2010dxb/Received on Tue Mar 02 2010 - 23:50:58 PST
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