Operation Bot Roast

No this is not the latest title of a XXX rated DVD, this is an official FBI operation to crack down on 'bot related cyber crime.

Robot or bot nets are collections of hundreds or even tens of thousands of computers infected with a virus which allows the "bot herder" or perpetrator of the attack to run programs which attack other machines on the Internet. These programs typically attempt to do the following:

• Steal the computer owner’s identity;
• Launch massive spam campaigns;
• Engage in click-fraud—schemes which artificially inflate the number of visitors to a website; and
• Launch denial of service attacks that can cripple web servers and crash sites.

The owner of the infected machine is typically unaware that their machine is under the control of the "bot herder". It is therefore critical that end users take PC security very seriously. Anti virus software should be updated and OS patches such as those automatically sent out by Microsoft should be applied.

In the wider world of click fraud, bot net attacks can be very difficult to counter against. How does a system identify a single bot net click, which then stays on a page as if reading details against a real person clicking through and reading the contents of an e-commerce site? Expand this to tens of thousands of IP addresses and we get the very real threat of click fraud.

Details of the operation are available on the official FBI website.

"Hey Scully want to check out my bot?"

"Put that away Mulder!"

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