Researchers at Russian anti-virus company Dr Web think they've uncovered a new botnet, which has recruited thousands of Macs, according to Graham Cluley (http://tinyurl.com/okynns3).

A botnet is a collection of Internet-connected programs communicating with other programs to perform tasks. This can be as harmless as keeping control of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks.

According to the Dr Web report (http://bit.ly/1rTbNzf), the sophisticated malware – which they have dubbed Mac.BackDoor.iWorm – has infected more than 17,000 computers running OS X. Unfortunately, what isn’t documented is how the malware spreads. Check out the Dr Web and Graham Cluley websites for more info.