Botnet Probe Turns up 70G Bytes of Personal, Financial Data

Researchers from the University of California gained control over a well-known and powerful network of hacked computers for 10 days, gaining insight into how it steals personal and financial data.

The botnet, known as Torpig or Sinowal, is one of the more sophisticated networks that uses hard-to-detect malicious software to infect computers and subsequently harvest data such as e-mail passwords and online banking credentials.

The researchers were able to monitor more than 180,000 hacked computers by exploiting a weakness within the command-and-control network used by the hackers to control the computers. It only worked for 10 days, however, until the hackers updated the command-and-control instructions, according to the researchers' 13-page paper.