Symantec Anti-Botnet Public Test

Symantec vs.botnet malware

Symantec is getting ready to take on the botnets.

The security company released new zombie-fighting software into a public beta test on Thursday. Norton AntiBot is client-side software designed to run along conventional anti-virus products, according to Ed Kim, director of product management at Symantec.

This malware-fighting software, though, doesn't depend on virus signatures and scan-based technologies, like anti-virus products generally do. Kim said in an interview that AntiBot is behaviorial-based technology, aimed at guarding against malware and Trojans that hackers use to infect computers and turn them into zombies to join their botnet armies. He also said it's designed to tackle systems that already have become part of a botnet and weed the malicious code out of infected computers.

"There are persistent botnet threats," said Kim. "In the second half of 2006, there was a 29% increase in bots compared to the first half of 2006." He didn't have numbers for bot growth in 2007.

A botnet is a group of thousands or hundreds of thousands of computers that a hacker -- also known as a botnet maser -- has infected and taken control of. Once the botnet master can execute code remotely on an infected machine, he can string these zombie computers together to form a virtual zombie army or botnet. They can be used to send out spam, launch other malware attacks, and launch denial-of-service attacks.

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