White House fights back against hackers

The Obama Administration announced a series of steps aimed at combating botnets — networks of computers that hackers take over and use to spread spam or attack websites.

Botnets have become a favorite weapon of hacker groups such as Anonymous that use them to overwhelm the servers of government and industry websites. After discussions with government agencies, an industry working group outlined a set of voluntary principles for companies to reduce the impact of botnets, while a financial industry group announced a pilot project for sharing information about the attacks. Several companies, along with the Homeland Security Department and the Federal Trade Commission, unveiled an education campaign called "Keep a Clean Machine" to teach consumers how to prevent their computers from being taken over by hackers.