If your household is like many households in North America, then you have a home wireless network. Home Wi-Fi networks are convenient and easy to setup. However, the home networks we know and love are facing an increasingly serious problem: network malware.
Although network hackers previously targeted corporate networks more often than home networks, more and more hackers are realizing that there is a considerable amount of value in home networks. With multiple internet-connected devices per household, each network malware attack adds several new devices onto existing botnets. And that is bad news for PC security experts around the world.
But how likely is it that your home network is infected with malware? According to a new report by Kindsight Security Labs of Mountain View, California, about 1 in every 8 home networks (13%) in North America is infected with malware.
About half of these infected networks were rated as high-level threats that could be used to transform home computers into virus-creating machines through massive botnets. In other words, your home’s computers, tablets, and smartphones could be being used to send viruses and malware to other networks.
What is a botnet and why should you be concerned?
Botnets are massive networks of infected computers. Hackers create malware with the intention of turning computers into bots on a network. When a computer becomes infected with that malware, it becomes just another bot on the network.
These botnets can lie dormant for weeks or even years before hackers take control of them. And once they take control, they have the power of hundreds of thousands (and often millions) of computers at their fingertips.
With that kind of power, hackers can launch millions of simultaneous attacks or flood the internet with malicious links. Just think of the damage a hacker can do over a single computer. Now multiply that by millions of computers and you should understand why botnets are so dangerous.
The new ZeroAccess botnet and how to remove it
A new type of botnet has taken over computers all over North America. That botnet is called ZeroAccess, and it’s the most complicated “click-spam” fraud scheme to date. Computers infected with ZeroAccess will automatically begin clicking online advertisements.
According to PCWorld.com, online advertisers are losing almost $1 million per day in fraudulent clicks. And although this might seem like a problem that only affects advertisers, it’s not: clicking on online advertising links will expose your computer to more risk. And since your computer’s security defenses have already been weakened or disabled through the ZeroAccess botnet, it’s at a high security risk of developing more viruses.
To make the ZeroAccess botnet even more significant, it has infected over 2.2 million home networks around the world – with the majority of those networks located in North America.
Defend your computer today!
Antivirus companies are already rolling out updates that defend your computer against ZeroAccess, so try performing an antivirus scan today. Or, download your free trial of PC Cleaner Pro and see if the anti-malware filters pick up anything. If they do, then you can purchase the full program license in order to remote that malware from your system.
