It used to be that cyber criminals were people with a highly technical skill
set, but this is not the norm anymore. This fact became obvious some two weeks
ago when news of the takedown of the Mariposa botnet and the three men behind it
reached the global public.
The Mariposa consisted of almost 13 million zombie computers and was run by
people who - according to Sean-Paul Correll, a researcher at Panda Security -
didn't have advanced hacker skills, but had resources available online and knew
how to use them.
This was made possible by the ease of use that characterizes this Web-based
software used to set up a botnet. In the last few years, this kind of software
has become easily procurable and makes this kind of illegal endeavor accessible
to all kinds of non-tech people without scruples.
