Ten to 25 percent of broadband networks are likely infected by bots, and bots cause 90
percent of spam, according to the Messaging Anti-Abuse
Working Group (MAAWG), a coalition of security companies, bandwidth providers, and
other interested parties.
MAAWG has issued a report on the problem as well as advice for IT managers, titled
“Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group Common Best Practices for Mitigating Large Scale Bot
Infections in Residential Networks” (available here
in .PDF format). It details best practices for ISPs for dealing with the issue and
provides a list of software for handling bot infections.
“ISPs have expressed concern about the problem,” Michael O’Reirdan, MAAWG chairman,
told InternetNews.com. “After all, the bot economy is about ripping people off.
Enterprise IT should be as worried about the problem as anyone else. Enterprises have PCs
that wander around the planet, aren’t always patch, and travel between home and
work.”
There is a lot of evidence that there are bots on corporate networks, he added.
“Corporate networks are especially valuable to criminals because they host valuable
treasury or bank transactions.”
Bot police best practices
The recommendations on the MAAWG report will be familiar to IT managers and includes
the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, several online anti-virus
scanners, and various applications that specialize in finding rootkits, spyware, adware,
and bots.
Learn about the report’s recommendations at InternetNews.com.
