Zbot Botnet Steals Thousands of CredentialsIn McAfee Labs we keep a close eye on the Zeus/Zbot/Gamover botnet malware that is responsible of thousands of samples we gather each day. The following graph shows the total number of Zbot samples submitted to McAfee Labs in recent months.
For a couple of weeks, McAfee Labs has followed a global Zbot campaign, in which payloads have been used to steal credentials. Between the end of March and April 3, the amount of bots connected to the botnet ranged between 26,000 and 41,000.
Countries InvolvedThe following map and table are based on the data of April 2. Only countries with more than 80 bots are highlighted:
The top 10 countries infected with the data-stealing malware:
Country Number of Bots1. United Kingdom 6,694
2. India 4,820
3. South Africa 3,472
4. China 1,197
5. Indonesia 1,175
6. South Korea 1,034
7. Italy 1,029
8. United States 999
9. Malaysia 958
10. Taiwan 664
By the Numbers
The statistics in the following botnet control screen show some interesting details around the most targeted CPUs and operating systems.
The 32-bit CPU architecture is targeted about three times more than 64-bit systems. Windows 7 is the leading operating system, closely followed by Windows XP.
When we started monitoring the botnet, the average number of bots connected to the botnet was 34,461. Around April 1, the number of bots decreased to 26,836. Immediately thereafter, we saw a successful campaign to update the number of bots, with the botnet reaching 41,820 bots. In the United Kingdom, for example, the number of bots grew by 2,000 to 8,663 infected hosts.
Original article: By Christiaan Beek on Apr 07, 2014