The Kneber botnet, so christened by security firm NetWitness in describing it to the press, is nothing new and there are many other botnets like it out there, according to a number of other security firms.
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Kneber is described as a botnet command-and-control system based on the ZeuS Trojan, a well-know type of malware capable of stealing financial data and login credentials.
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"We're tracking, at any time, about 100 unique ZeuS botnets," says Marc Maiffret, chief security architect at FireEye. "There are constantly-changing variants of it."
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The ZeuS Trojan "is not a new threat. It's a threat that's been around for a few years," says Elias Levy, senior technical director of Symantec's security-response group, who characterized the Kneber botnet as of a fairly "normal" size. He says these type of botnet infections typically reach into the tens of thousands and it not's surprising to see hundreds of thousands botnet-controlled machines. But he commends NetWitness for gathering "pretty good intelligence; they got a glimpse of how it worked," but adds, "but that one botnet, it's not that much different than the many others out there."
McAfee also piped in, issuing a statement saying, "In the world of cybersecurity, the 'Kneber' botnet is, unfortunately, just another botnet. With 75,000 infected machines, Kneber is not even that big, there are much bigger botnets."
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The most recent version of ZeuS, version 1.3, which was first seen in November of last year, costs thousands, with even a single module costing $10,000 in criminal circles, according to SecureWorks, which is expected to issue an in-depth report about ZeuS 1.3 next Monday. The new version of ZeuS is so deadly, it rips through unauthorized online wire transfers once it gets hold in an infected machine -- and more.
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