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WASHINGTON (AP) - More than 1 million computers — possibly yours, too — are used by hackers as remote-controlled robots to crash online systems, accept spam and steal users' personal information, the FBI said Wednesday. The government has no way to track down all the computers, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, that hackers have massed into centrally controlled collections known as botnets.
But the FBI has pulled the plug on several botnet hackers, or zombies. One man was charged this week in a scheme that froze computer systems at Chicago-area hospitals in 2006 and delayed medical services.
What was viewed seven years ago as a kind of prank to boot people off-line has evolved into schemes to defraud people by stealing credit card and Social Security data, by crashing retail Web sites and through "pump-and-dump" online stock deals.
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