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Security adviser: Cyberthreats keep growing
November 22, 2006 -
'Tis the season to send spam
November 20, 2006 -
Zombies continue to chase Windows PCs
October 24, 2006 -
Florida man charged in botnet attack on Akamai
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Zombies try to blend in with the crowd
October 19, 2006
That compromise means they can be controlled remotely by a malicious outsider, often without the PC owner's knowledge. Computers not protected by adequate antivirus and firewall software are at greatest risk of being corralled into a botnet.
The A to Z of security
Armies of zombie PCs are used by cybercriminals for sending spam or viruses or committing denial-of-service attacks. Capacity on botnets is rented out to criminal gangs or individuals for as little as $100 for a couple of hours by their creator--often a very commercially motivated virus writer.
A zombie army was used in a high profile distributed denial-of-service attack against Akamai Technologies this year, affecting the Web sites of some of its big-name tech clients.
Natasha Lomas reported for Silicon.com in London.
See more CNET content tagged:
denial of service,
antivirus,
security,
virus,
PC
are Windows XP SP2.
I sure hope all this "Vista is more secure" isn't all hype. We're
already blocking or filtering 95.4% of all email.
http://www.secureworks.com/analysis/spamthru-stats/
If a Vista end user runs into a security roadblock, they'll simply undo the secure setting in order to perform their activity, and once again have a wide-open OS sitting on the Internet for malware to prey on.
ISP's need to take more responsibility for the traffic they handle. If they all made a more concerted effort for security, that would make an even bigger difference.
ejevo is more than right that the software has to be a ton easier to configure and smarter so the end user doesn't see popups that they will make effort to get rid of. Microsoft has been moving this way with Defender, but making it easier to use also makes it less powerful.
To safer web surfing!