Robert McMillan of PC Advisor reports that botnet armies are behind many spam, phishing and denial of service attacks. Botnets are remote-controlled PCs that have been taken over without their user’s knowledge. Symantec counted more than 4.5 million of them during the first six months of 2006 and they continue to grow at a rapid pace. Cybercriminals frequently use botnets to boost web advertising billings by automatically clicking on Internet ads, a tactic known as clickfraud.

“Botnets are really where it’s at for serious cyber criminals, because of their concentrated power,” according to Aaron Kornblum, a senior attorney with Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement team. “That power can be used for all sorts of malicious conduct on the internet.”

Botnets are changing the economics of cybercrime, according to Daniel Druker, executive vice president of marketing with Postini. The botnet networks were the biggest source of spam over the past year, giving spammers access to virtually unlimited bandwidth, he said.

Druker estimates that about 50,000 computers are sending spam and malicious content at any given moment. In most cases, these computers will only operate for about 45 minutes, and then go silent, making it hard to identify them.

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