1.9-million-PC botnet uncovered

SAN FRANCISCO, April 22 (UPI) -- U.S. computer security experts say they have discovered a "botnet" of 1.9 million secretly infected "zombie" PCs controlled by a Ukrainian gang.

The San Jose, Calif., computer security firm Finjan said the six-member cybergang since February has instructed the infected computers to copy files, record keystrokes, send spam and take screenshots in one the largest-ever botnets controlled by a single gang ever found, Cnet.com reported Wednesday.

Finjan marketing director Ophir Shalitin, speaking to the computer news Web site before the RSA security conference in San Francisco, said the gang had compromised computers in 77 government-owned Web address domains in the United States and other countries, with nearly 80 percent of them running the Internet Explorer browser on Windows XP operating systems.

The U.S. experts said the command server used to control the infected PCs was instructing the zombie computers, or "bots," to download and execute a malicious program detectable by only 4 out of 39 currently available anti-virus products, Cnet reported.