Wot Bot?

Online scammers already have the potential to take large amounts of money from business (and individual) bank accounts, small company bosses have been warned this week. APA feels this is a major concern and should be the subject of Board debate in the coming year.

Luis Corrons, technical director for Panda Security, said "Small and medium companies are a major target and have little security in place to defend against attacks and they are being mounted on an almost daily basis.”

He explained how one company in Bilbao, Spain, became infected by a Trojan virus and had £350,000 stolen from its bank account. He explained that company bosses must take precautions to protect all hardware, as a single infection on a single computer can reap havoc. He explained how bot herders can send spam from a company IP address, leading to all of a company's web connections becoming blacklisted by their internet service provider.

Security firm Symantec (Norton Security Products) reported this week that three-quarters of businesses around the world have been targeted by hackers during the last 12 months.

Gareth

Lingo translation - A bot herder (or bot master) is the originator of a botnet (a jargon term for a collection of software agents or bits, that run autonomously and automatically) and can control the group remotely for nefarious purposes