NIST to Hold Botnet Workshop

Technical Aspects of Botnets, a free, day-long workshop, will be held May 30 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology at its Gaithersburg, Md., campus near Washington.

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NIST says the purpose of the workshop is to engage stakeholders in identifying the available and needed technologies to prevent, identify and remediate botnets and to explore current and future efforts to develop botnet metrics and methodologies for measuring and reporting botnet activities.

Participants at the workshop will explore the technologies, tools and resources that are used against botnets and examine their effectiveness, valuable characteristics and gaps. During a panel session, government and private-sector representatives will share their perspectives on the roles various stakeholders play, including Internet service providers, browser providers, security firms and search engines as well as users.

Advanced registration is required. To register, and for more information, check out the Technical Aspects of Botnets webpage.

Citing research conducted by security provider McAfee, NIST says the botnet problem is serious, with some 4 million new botnet infections occurring monthly.

A botnet is a collection of compromised computers that have been infected with a malicious program, often a virus. The malware often infects the computer without the owner knowing. From there, the virus spreads to other computers creating a remotely controlled network of many compromised computers. Botnets can be used for a variety of nuisance and illegal activities including sending spam e-mail, launching denial of service attacks that can bring down websites or stealing passwords and financial information such as credit card numbers.