Behold the Kraken! It’s a Titan of Botnets

Fans of the cult classic 80’s flic, ‘Clash of the Titans‘ know the Kraken as an evil sea monster that terrorizes the ancient Greeks. Apparently the Kraken is now back, with a 2008 twist.

Instead of being a Sea monster, it’s what one security research firm is claiming to be the biggest Botnet in history.

Kraken is the largest army weve
seen to date and has an unprecedented presence in enterprise networks. We have
observed evidence of Kraken-based compromises in at least 50 of the
Fortune 500, said Paul Royal, Principal
Researcher at Damballa in a statement.

Damballa is now predicting that the  Kraken will grow to least 600,000 unique victims per day by the middle of April. Damballa currently alleges that individual victims in the Kraken BotArmy have sent  up to 500,000 pieces of spam in a single day.

Damballa also alleges that the Kraken (which in Clash of the Titans is something that was easily seen) is going undetected on the machines it infects, even if they have antivirus software installed.

While the Kraken may well be a legitimate botnet, it’s important to note that Damballa is an anti-botnet vendor whose software can allegedly detect/track the Kraken. It will be interesting to see how many other security research firms will now go Kraken hunting too and take down this titan.

It will also be interesting to see what it will take to actually stop the Kraken this time. In Clash of the Titans the Kraken was only appeased by the attempted sacrifice of a human (by the Greek princess Andromeda). I wonder who will play the role of Greek Hero Perseus and his winged horse Pegasus in the botnet version of this drama.

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