The Kraken botnet is a network hacking
spyware program that attacks
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
and Apple
Macintosh systems through
email and
World Wide Web sites such as
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
sites. It was the world's largest
botnet
Researchers say that Kraken infected machines in at least 50 of the
Fortune 500
The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...
companies and grew to over 400,000 bots.
It was estimated to send 9 billion spam messages per day. Kraken botnet malware may have been designed to evade anti-virus software, and employed techniques to stymie conventional anti-virus software.
History
The Kraken botnet was first discovered in 2008 by security firm Damballa. Researchers described it as the largest botnet discovered at the time, compromising over 400,000 infected machines. This was more than twice the size of the
Storm botnet
The Storm botnet or Storm worm botnet (also known as Dorf botnet and Ecard malware) was a remotely controlled network of "zombie" computers (or "botnet") that had been linked by the Storm Worm, a Trojan horse spread through e-mail spam. At ...
, which was previously considered to be the largest zombie network.
Prevalence In a 24-hour period on March 25, 2008, Kraken was observed to have infected 409,912 unique IP addresses. Researchers predicted the botnet would grow to over 600,000 nodes within two weeks. The botnet infiltrated machines inside major corporations, including over 50
Fortune 500 companies.
Action
Kraken is believed to spread primarily through
social engineering Social engineering may refer to:
* Social engineering (political science), a means of influencing particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale
* Social engineering (security), obtaining confidential information by manipulating and/or ...
, by tricking users into clicking on malicious files disguised as images. Once executed, the Kraken malware copies itself to the victim's hard drive in a slightly altered format, allowing it to evade detection by antivirus software. Infected machines also regularly update themselves with new variants to avoid detection. Kraken's ability to rapidly morph its codebase has allowed it to evade detection by most antivirus products. At the time of discovery, only about 20 percent of antivirus products were detecting the malware. This code obfuscation and frequent updates have made it an extremely stealthy and evasive botnet. Once infected, the Kraken malware uses the victim's machine to send large volumes of spam advertising various scams and questionable products like high-interest loans, fake luxury goods, and gambling sites. Researchers observed bots in the network sending as many as 500,000
spam
Spam may refer to:
* Spam (food), a canned pork meat product
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...
emails per day.
See also
*
Computer worm
A computer worm is a standalone malware computer program that replicates itself in order to spread to other computers. It often uses a computer network to spread itself, relying on security failures on the target computer to access it. It wil ...
*
Internet bot
References
External links
* Fisher, Dennis
Kraken botnet balloons to dangerous levels, SearchSecurity.com, Apr. 7, 2008, retrieved 2008-04-07
*Orion, Egan
There's a new botnet worm on the loose: Kraken seeks to sink the Fortune 500 ''
The Inquirer'', April 7, 2008, retrieved 2008-04-07
* Neri
Kraken Botnet, la Botnet mas grande del Mundo retrieved 2008-04-07, en
español.
* Pierce, Cody
* Amini, Pedram
Kraken Botnet Infiltration 2008-04-28, retrieved 2008-04-28
Internet security
Distributed computing projects
Spamming
Botnets
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