'Black Energy' botnet attacks Russian online stores

On Jan, 13 'Black Energy' botnet (reportedly of Russian origin) shut down ultra-online.ru and plati.ru online stores. DDoS-attacks of this kind were actively promoted in Russian part of Internet since November, thru email spam or forums. Later in December 'Black Energy' exploited Utro.ru banner network to infect users' computers. According to the security blogger urs-molotoff.blogspot.com, the number of such DDoS attacks started to grow on New Year's eve. As he told in interview with Webplanet.ru, attacks of this kind are ordered by competitors among online merchants, and they will continue to spread until the first case of criminal prosecution. At the same time, Western security experts forecast the general growth of political DDoS-attacks with the spread of botnets in Russia. In fact, the previous series of DDoS-attacks on Russian web were political already, with opposition sites permanently down on the eve of parliament election. But now, after the election, it looks like commercial rivals are to use this weapon more often then politics.