Storm botnet nearly wiped out

The Storm botnet, an army of PCs programmed to generate spam and spread viruses, was decimated in April, according to experts.

Security firm MessageLabs has said that all but five per cent of the network was wiped out last month after millions of PCs had fallen victim to the Storm Trojan.

The Storm Trojan attempts to infect a PC so it can be controlled by a cybercriminal, turning it into a 'bot'.

A botnet is a network of PCs that have been compromised without the owner's knowledge and are controlled remotely to generate spam and spread malware to other PCs.

However, it wasn't all good news on the security front in April, according to MessageLabs.

"April was a month of unpredictability with the mighty Storm botnet losing all but five per cent of its anonymous army, but web-based malware reaching new levels," said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs.

MessageLabs said it identified an average of 1,214 new websites per day hosting malware, an increase of 619 per day compared with March.

www.messagelabs.com