Cybercriminals today create and use botnets to perpetrate their criminal activities. Whether it is to send out Blackhole Exploit Kit spam or to use as entry points into organizations, the one constant is that most bots (victim computers) communicate back and forth with command and control (C&C) servers. Trend Micro’s Global Threat Intelligence, derived from our Smart Protection Network™, monitors C&C servers, infected Bots, and the malicious communication between the two regularly to ensure our customers are protected.
Today we’re publishing a new global map showing active C&C servers, highlighted by red dots, and bots (victim computers), highlighted by blue dots, to show you where these botnets are located in the world. If you are using the Chrome or Firefox browsers, you will see some of the dots radiate, showing any systems that are tied together (a unique botnet). All users can mouse over any of the servers to get a pop-up message that shows the server location, when it was first observed, most affected countries, and the total number of victims we’ve found associated with that server. Note that the blue dots represent more than one victim in most instances.
