With terrifying speed and stealth, cybercriminals can infect millions of PCs with malware, turning them into a vicious zombie army mobilized to commit crimes like identity theft, financial fraud and worse.
As life sometimes imitates art, this concept extends to the world of malware. An emerging new malware, analogous to a new zombie franchise, is Nodersok. This newly-discovered malware can turn PCs into zombies with a method never seen before and should be considered a new type of malware altogether.
Windows malware turns PCs into zombies
Nodersok is the new kid on the block of zombifying malware types. After initial infection, compromised systems used already existing legitimate LOLBins and others it downloads to turn a compromised system into an unwitting zombie at the command of its C2 server.
Dear ABC News Fixer: I think you should let your viewers know about an ongoing scam, in which someone calls and claims to be with Windows or Microsoft, telling you they have detected a virus or a malfunction in your computer. They ask you to log into a website and then they plant a real virus or malware in your computer and hold you hostage for absurd fees to remove it.
Recently, the conversation around what is a botnet has grown from one that only existed in the cybersecurity landscape to a more universal discourse. We were saying earlier that the most common method for recruiting computers into a botnet is through malware. The owners of the botnet will do anything to get the malicious bot code on your computer. There are a few ways they can achieve this:
Whether you call it a zombie computer army or a botnet, it's bad business -- millions of computers have already fallen under the control of malicious hackers known as crackers. These crackers rely on several strategies aimed at getting you to download and execute a piece of malicious software, or malware. If you fall into the trap, your computer becomes compromised.
At this point, it is up to the operator to exercise good judgment and question why a calculator application needs to make changes to the Registry. Unfortunately, too many people inadvertently load bad stuff on their PCs, or use obsolete or unpatched software that allows malware on the system, thus contributing more zombies to the botnet army.
While most of the malware on this list strictly hit computers, Slammer was created with broader ambitions. Slammer is the kind of virus that makes it into films, as only a few minutes after infecting its first victim, it was doubling itself every few seconds. 15 minutes in and Slammer had infected half of the servers that essentially ran the internet.
But, you may ask, doesn't Windows 11 have antivirus built right in? It's true that Microsoft Defender is built into Windows, and it gained more responsibilities with updates in the last few years. If you have no other antivirus, Microsoft Defender turns on automatically. If you install a third-party antivirus, it goes dormant. Microsoft Defender has been getting better scores from the independent labs, and in our own tests, but the best third-party antivirus products, both free and premium, score way higher.
There's always the chance your antivirus might miss a very new, very virulent malware strain. You also may run into trouble when you try to install antivirus protection, because the malware already entrenched on your computer fights back. In either of those cases, you can call on the many free cleanup-only tools.
The process of securing yourself against botnets can take two different forms: you're either preventing your own devices from becoming bots, or fighting off attacks launched by botnets. In either case, as this article hopefully has made clear, there isn't much you can do to defend yourself that won't already be part of a good security posture. Hackers turn devices into bots with malware delivered via phishing emails, so make sure your staff knows not to open phishing emails. They hack into insecure IoT devices, so make sure you set those devices' passwords to something other than the default. If hackers do manage to plant malware on your computers, you'll need up-to-date antivirus to sniff it out. If you're on the receiving end of a DDoS attack, you can filter out the attacking traffic, or beef up your capacity with a content delivery network.
There was a deadly virus outbreak that has nearly turned all of humanity into zombies. The virus is still spreading, and zombies want to infect more survivors. You get to lead the remnant of the earth and must protect them from the deadly virus. Will you succeed?
TL;DR: A botnet is a network of computers infected with the same malware, which allows a hacker to remotely control the computers and turn them into a zombie army, without their owners' knowledge. Botnets can be used to conduct attacks against other systems or to distribute spam and malware.
A zombie computer is a compromised machine that hackers can control remotely and instruct it to perform various malicious tasks. The majority of zombie computers are actually home-based machines owned and used by the average Joe and Jane. The worst part is that users rarely suspect hackers have taken over their computers and turned them into zombies.
Malware may turn your machine into a zombie computer and use it as a distribution point for other malware attacks. Run an in-depth antivirus scan and check if your security tools detect anything unusual.
The authors of ransomware instill fear and panic into their victims, causing them to click on a link or pay a ransom, and users systems can become infected with additional malware. Ransomware displays intimidating messages similar to those below:
This is the way that most times make Linux users regret for using Linux. If you boot into windows with Linux installed on another partition the thread goes in the Linux partition and destroys files, programs and sometimes the Linux system. However if you do not boot into windows this problem will not appear in Linux 2ff7e9595c
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