Kneber botnet is a threat to government computers, software

The Kneber botnet, a global malware strain infecting more than 75,000 computers worldwide, is a potential threat to government networks and software, according NetWitness, the web security company that discovered the program, as reported by GovInfoSecurity.com.

Only a small portion of the computers infected during the initial discovery were property of the government, but the rate at which Knever can spread worries NetWitness and other security providers.

“One of the things that we determined as we were researching this is some of the recent spear phishing attacks towards .gov email addresses were involving the Zeus Trojan as well,” Alex Cox, principal analyst at NetWitness, told the GovSecurityInfo.com. “And when we did some malware analysis on those particular Trojans, what we found was that the commanding control servers and structures were the same as the ones that were result of this log data.”

Government web security has come into question in recent weeks. President Barack Obama spoke of the need to modernize federal IT during his State of the Union Address in January, and plans to release details of the White House’s web security plan during the ongoing RSA Conference.

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