Campaign to Heighten Awareness of Need for Botnet Counter-Measures

FireEye, Inc., the leader in global anti-botnet protection, continues its strategic momentum in the war against botnet-driven cybercrime with industry speaking engagements geared to educate government, education, and technology audiences about the approaches available to counter the threats and damages incurred through the current botnet pandemic. According to the Wikipedia, botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or bots, which run autonomously and automatically. They run on groups of "zombie" computers controlled remotely by crackers. While the term "botnet" can be used to refer to any group of bots, such as IRC bots, the word is generally used to refer to a collection of compromised computers (called zombie computers) running programs, usually referred to as worms, Trojan horses, or backdoors, under a common command and control infrastructure. A botnet's originator (aka "bot herder") can control the group remotely, usually for nefarious purposes.

Experts estimate approximately 150 million bot-infected computers worldwide are used for nefarious botnet activities, yet there has not been a coordinated security response, nor an avenue for such a response, from victims of botnet infiltrations. Through a series of upcoming industry events, FireEye seeks to bring greater understanding of botnets to IT and security professionals, informing and strengthening their anti-botnet protection initiatives.

FireEye opens the Cyber Security Summit, co-hosted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), University of Tennessee, Fountainhead College of Technology and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), with a presentation on virtualization and its role in securing the network. On October 16, Dr. Michael J. Staggs, chief investigator at FireEye, will speak on the topic, "Beyond Data Center Consolidation: Realizing Virtualization's Network Security Capabilities." Additionally, early Internet architect and technologist, Johnson Agogbua will be speaking at Technology Managers Forum's Security Forum 2007, which features Emerging Trends in Enterprise Security on October 18 in New York. Agogbua is an external advocate and evangelist of FireEye's technical approach and vision for protecting all customers from botnet threats. He is a member of the United States FCC Technological Advisory Council and Network World magazine named Agogbua as one of the 50 "On Power's Edge."

Today, bot herders hijack millions of PCs and link them together into a criminal network perpetrating a wide range of illegal activities. Enterprise, consumer, and government computers are now unwitting perpetrators, accomplices, and victims in the estimated $67 billion computer-based crime wave hitting the Internet. Security measures must take into account the tools and tactics of criminal syndicates in order to be effective. By providing a deep understanding of bot herder criminality and the underlying botnet infrastructure, FireEye equips IT security and law enforcement professionals with the knowledge and tools to eliminate bots from their network, protect their critical business infrastructure, and prevent data compromises from taking place. FireEye is sharing critical knowledge about the entire cybercrime cycle - from the techniques employed to