Botnet threat misses SA

By Siyabonga Africa for Trellix

Johannesburg, 14 May 2009

SA has so far not been affected by the global botnet threat, which has seen more than 12 million PCs being hijacked since January, says McAfee.

According to the security firm, the US hosts the largest percentage of infected computers, at 18%.

Botnets are a collection of software robots running autonomously and automatically, and are often used by hackers to distribute malicious software on a large scale.

"We reported a 50% increase in the number of IP addresses hijacked by botnets," says McAfee regional manager for Africa Jayson O`Reilly. "At this point, SA does not come up in the top 10 countries in terms of percentage of those IPs."

O`Reilly believes the low number of broadband-connected systems in the country, at only 4.8% of the population, could be the reason SA is not one of the major targeted countries. The US tops the list of targeted countries, with more than 51% of its households having broadband connectivity.

"This highlights a trend Internet users in SA should be aware of, which is that criminals today make their revenue from ongoing access to compromised systems, generally via Internet browsing, poor security implementations and increasing numbers of high-speed DSL devices only play to this ongoing challenge."

O`Reilly says South African Internet users can learn from the experiences of countries that are suffering more from this issue as the number of high-speed connected devices will surely only increase in the future.

To war

"The massive expansion of these botnets provides cyber criminals with the infrastructure they need to flood the Web with malware," says McAfee senior VP Jeff Green.

In 2007, eastern European state Estonia was the victim of a three-week wave of cyber attacks. The main culprit, a disgruntled ethnic Russian living in Estonia, utilised botnets for mass spam distribution. The attacks targeted, among others, the Web sites of Estonian organisations, such as the Estonian Parliament, banks and ministries.

Worldwide countries have begun beefing up their cyber warfare capabilities. CSIR defence, peace, safety and security manager Jackie Phahlamohlaka says the council is helping the South African National Defence Force to develop a world-class science, engineering and technology capability in the information warfare arena.

"Traditional boundaries that used to define countries are no longer important because of the advance in ICT," says Phahlamohlaka. "People have become cyber citizens."