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BBC team in botnet 'attack'

A team from the BBC has highlighted the online threats facing thousands of internet users in an experiment that saw them purchase a botnet of 22,000 malware infected computers.

The team from the BBC's technology programme Click then proceeded to launch the botnet in a mock spam attack that left many consumers' machines infected in their bid to highlight the internet security issues.

Affected people were then contacted and informed of the infection and how to go about getting rid of it as well as advising them on how to protect themselves from the online security threat.

"Our purpose was to demonstrate botnets' collective power when in the hands of criminals", said the team, which revealed that the network of hijacked machines has been disabled.

The experiment also involved a Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attack, which is sometimes deployed by crooks to overwhelm sites and demand a ransom.

To ward off such malware, internet users are advised to ensure their computers have proper anti-virus software.

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