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FTC Cries For Help Against Zombies
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2005-05-24
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Zombies' haute cuisine has changed from brains a la teenager to spam a la maison, and the FTC is asking for ISPs for help.
Fifty to eighty percent of all spam is estimated to have come from "zombie" networks originating from unsuspecting home computer users.
Online viruses such as SoBig are designed to infect the computers and send out millions of spam emails with the owners becoming none the wiser. This practice saves spammers big bucks in bandwidth costs by secretly passing them off to others.
The US Federal Trade Commission is asking 3000 Internet service providers worldwide to disconnect infected subscribers until their machines are clean.
The FTC, by strongly suggesting rather than requiring, is putting pressure on ISPs for a solution as most computer users lack the technical savvy to solve the problem.
One of the suggestions was for ISPs to route customer email through their own servers to safeguard against the spamming.
Several countries' ISPs are participating in the project, with a few holdouts like China where large numbers of zombie computers are known to be.
About the Author:
SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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