Criminals 'may overwhelm the web'
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Criminals controlling millions of personal computers are threatening the internet's future, experts have warned.
Up to a quarter of computers on the net may be used by cyber criminals in so-called botnets, said Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet.
Technology writer John Markoff said: 'It's as bad as you can imagine, it puts the whole internet at risk.'
The panel of leading experts was discussing the future of the internet at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Internet pandemic
Mr Cerf, who is one of the co-developers of the TCP/IP standard that underlies all internet traffic and now works for Google, likened the spread of botnets to a 'pandemic'.
Of the 600 million computers currently on the internet, between 100 and 150 million were already part of these botnets, Mr Cerf said.
Botnets are made up of large numbers of computers that malicious hackers have brought under their control after infecting them with so-called Trojan virus programs.
Criminals controlling millions of personal computers are threatening the internet's future, experts have warned.Up to a quarter of computers on the net may be used by cyber criminals in so-called botnets, said Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet.
Technology writer John Markoff said: 'It's as bad as you can imagine, it puts the whole internet at risk.'
The panel of leading experts was discussing the future of the internet at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Internet pandemic
Mr Cerf, who is one of the co-developers of the TCP/IP standard that underlies all internet traffic and now works for Google, likened the spread of botnets to a 'pandemic'.
Of the 600 million computers currently on the internet, between 100 and 150 million were already part of these botnets, Mr Cerf said.
Botnets are made up of large numbers of computers that malicious hackers have brought under their control after infecting them with so-called Trojan virus programs.
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