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General discussion

All eyes on bad ?phatbot'

Mar 17, 2004 8:51PM PST

Security experts and the US government are monitoring the moves of a hacker tool dubbed "phatbot", which uses the same peer-to-peer (P2P) networking abilities that power file-sharing networks like Kazaa and BearShare, says WashingtonPost.com. Described as a "virtual Swiss army knife of attack software", Phatbot apparently allows its authors to gain control over computers and link them into P2P networks that can be used to send spam or carry out distributed denial-of-service attacks on Web sites. It also snoops for passwords on infected computers and tries to disable anti-virus software.

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/2004/0403181000.asp#1

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