Security firm Netwitness has discovered a new botnet that is equal or worse than last year's Conficker worm. Kneber botnet, a new form of malware, has infected more than 74,000 computer systems across the world. It is focused on stealing login credentials for e-mail systems, social networks, and banking sites, according to Netwitness. Kneber is hard to detect. By some estimates, it has compromised data from nearly 2500 corporate and government and corporate networks around the world.

Netwitness says Kneber is a ZeuS Trojan botnet, a type of botnet known for its capability to target and steal key information stored on computers. Many compromised systems also have the Waledac Trojan--a worm known to create e-mail spam botnets that was recently associated with Conficker.

Netwitness says Kneber controlled machines are in 196 countries. The five countries with the most significant instances of infected machines are Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States.

Kneber targets only Windows machines. Computers running Windows XP Professional SP2 make up the majority of the botnet army. Netwitness did not report on infections among Windows 7 machines. Kneber is primarily found on machines in corporate and government infrastructures, but home users can be affected as well.

Kneber is targeting login credentials for online social networks, e-mail accounts, and online financial services. The top sites with stolen login credentials, according to Netwitness' report are Facebook, Yahoo, hi5, metroflog, sonico and netlog. While the focus has been on e-mail and social networks, Kneber is now targeting banking sites as well.

___

When on a website, even if it is a website you trust, be careful on clicking to close any strange pop-up window. For example you may be on Facebook (I only use that as an example) and there will be a popup. That popup may be from a website that you were on earlier which may be equally innocent but a victim itself. The point is, do not click on any strange popup. Instead, use alt+Ctrl+Del to bring up the task manager and force the closing of your browser in that way. Your software to prevent popups does not always work.

Websites more and more have started using ajax to force ads over their content and that makes users more ready to click to close the embedded window which can be a bad habit to get in. I wish elite media and others would stop that kind of sh*t.

Webmasters, put your ads with your content. Put them off to the side or clearly mark them as ads inside of your content. Don't get crazy using ajax just because you can. Over using ajax to force ads is no better behavior than dang popup windows.