The Kraken botnet, the biggest zombie network until it was disabled last year, has risen from the depths again. IT security staff need to be vigilant as the Kraken botnet claws its way up from the depths. Already, the Kraken descendant has claimed about 320,000 computers since April. To get back to its former glory, it needs twice that.

The new Kraken botnet is a data security risk just like the old Kraken, generating around 600,000 spam mails per hour per computer. However, what has really puzzled security researchers, is that the Kraken is being spread to computers by a different botnet – the for-hire Butterfly framework which is used to infect Windows PCs.