Botnets threaten the Internet’s future

Criminals controlling millions of personal computers are threatening the Internet’s future, BBC News reports.

Up to a quarter of computers on the Net may be used by cyber criminals in so-called botnets, said Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet.

Technology writer John Markoff said: “It’s as bad as you can imagine, it puts the whole Internet at risk.”

Of the 600 million computers currently on the Internet, between 100 and 150 million were already part of these botnets, Mr Cerf said. He likened the spread of botnets to a “pandemic”.

Botnets are made up of large numbers of computers that malicious hackers have brought under their control after infecting them with so-called Trojan virus programs.

While most owners are oblivious to the infection, the networks of tens of thousands of computers are used to launch spam e-mail campaigns, denial-of-service attacks or online fraud schemes.