Living With a Zombie

By Digitivity on February 11, 2008 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a survey, conducted on different computers all around the globe, it was found that 50 - 80% spam worldwide was sent by zombie computers. Microsoft used a computer with low protection to check the strength of phishing attacks on a computer. Microsoft's computer received 5 million requests in three weeks and 18 million spam e-mails. Computer turning into 'Zombies' has become a problem for online internet securities. Online criminals target home users with high speed internet connections as home computers are less protected.

digitivity

A zombie computer is mostly a home computer which is infected with a virus/trojan horse. Unlike the zombies of any Hollywood movie, zombie computers are not easily identifiable, they are silent workers.

Zombies in movies have a strange appearance and they make groaning sounds but computer zombies are different, they send spam and gives their control to malicious users. Zombie computer allows online criminals to send remote commands, which are processed by the infected computer.

A computer turns into a zombie when an internet user gets tricked, and downloads malicious code hidden in an attachment in video, music, image or any other downloadable file. Once the malicious code is downloaded, it sends an alert to distant server where the online criminal (master of the computer) is sitting. In that alert message, infected computer informs about its Internet Address (IP location) and hijack status.

Online criminals take control over many zombie computers at a time. All the Zombie computer are then used together for malicious tasks. A group of Zombie computers are known as 'botnets'. Botnets can include thousands of computers. All these computers, if used together, can block a server by repeatedly sending messages to a same server. They are also responsible for almost 80% of the e-mail spam all over the world.

digitivity

When a user leaves an infected computer having high speed internet connection on standby, the computer starts sending malicious content to other computers and networks. Online spies command their zombie computers to record and send online transactions, credit card numbers,bank accounts and other personal details.

Most spammers protect their identity by sending mails through zombie computers or by creating fake e-mails, thus, making it difficult for online internet securities to track down the spammer on the baises of information provided in the spam email.

To aware internet users about phishing attacks and encourage internet service providers to take zombie preventive measures a website was launched by Federal Consumer Protection focusing on "Operation Spam Zombie", this was done along with more than twenty countries and thirty five government partners.

To check if you are working with a zombie look out for these signs: computer working too slow, displays mysterious messages or responds in an unexpected manner If , you find these signs in your computer, time for you to update your antivirus and run a system scan. Also download latest malware and adware software removers on your computer.