Finjan tracks huge botnet

One of the largest and most sophisticated botnets ever to be uncovered has infiltrated government departments around the world, according to Finjan.

The security firm said it had uncovered the network of more than two million hijacked PCs in February and linked it to a single command and control centre based in the Ukraine.

Along with a large number of compromised consumer and corporate computers, Finjan said there were infected computers on the networks of 77 government departments in different countries.

Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Finjan’s chief technology officer, said: "The PCs were compromised by people visiting infected websites – known as drive-by downloads – and the relatively short time in which it has grown to this size and the sophistication of what it can do makes this botnet unique to anything we have found before."

The command and control centre in the Ukraine is, Finjan believes, run by an Eastern European gang of six people. Other criminals are able to hire time on this botnet for minimal amounts.

"The average is about $100 for 1,000 infected computers for a day," he said, while warning the criminals can then wreak immense damage within a very short time.

He said the computers were being infected with Trojans. These can carry out a variety of attacks, and Finjan has seen keystroke loggers – malicious software that lets the attackers read emails, launch denial of service attacks and steal personal information including bank and card details and passwords.

Finjan would not be drawn on which countries and which government agencies had been compromised but said it has informed both the UK and US authorities. Mr Ben-Itzhak said he expected this botnet to continue to grow.