There are millions of bot-infected PCs on the Internet. In September 2006, a McAfee study placed the number of machines unwittingly joined to botnets at approximately 12 million - a population larger than the country of Greece. The FBI calls botnets a growing threat to national security and Symantec VP Rowan Trollope warns that those infected with bots risk "having their own identity or personal information stolen" and their PCs being used to carry out "large scale criminal activities." Any way you slice it, botnets are a huge problem and it's a problem that's only getting worse.

Bots are big business, and botnet controllers can fetch up to 40 cents per infected PC.To keep up with the growing demand, today's malware is turned out in assembly line fashion, with each subsequent variant methodically tweaked to exploit the signature update requirements of traditional scanners. Once on the system, these bots typically cripple the antivirus software and firewall, hide their tracks through the use of rootkits, and proceed to silently takeover your system.

Symantec's Norton AntiBot confronts the growing threat of bots and botnets. Norton AntiBot works alongside existing antivirus (from any vendor), using behavior-based analysis to monitor processes, files, and other active components to ensure their integrity and your safety. Norton AntiBot not only helps to prevent new bots from installing, it can also help ferret out the bots that may already be lurking on your PC.

But even coupled with Norton AntiBot, security software can't go it alone. Make sure you are engaging in good computer habits: keep your systems patched, your antivirus software up-to-date, a firewall enabled, and avoid activities that are almost an invitation to disaster - in particular, avoid peer-to-peer filesharing (including gnutella, kazaa, morpheus, and bittorrent) and don't open attachments received unexpectedly or follow links in IM unless you are absolutely certain as to their source and their validity.