FBI Nabs Three ‘Bot Herders’

by admin June 14, 2007 at 6:44 pm

FBI’s ongoing ‘Operation Bot Roast’ has resulted in felony charges for three hackers accused of controlling botnets.

The FBI Wednesday announced that its “Operation Bot Roast” anti-botnet sweep has so far identified more than 1 million hijacked personal computers and resulted in the arrest of three men charged with everything from spamming to infecting systems at several hospitals.

The operation is an ongoing effort to disrupt the bot trade and identify botnet controllers, the FBI said at a news conference. “Bot” is the term for an infected personal computer. A “botnet” is a large number of hijacked PCs controlled by a hacker, called a “bot herder.” Botnets are used by spammers, criminals launching distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and malware authors looking to spread their applications.

Full story: pcworld.com