If you have not heard, we are our own worst nightmare.  According to Wikipedia,  Zombies(often shortened as zombie) is any computer that has Internet access and has been compromised by a hacker, virus, and/or Trojan horse.

Generally, a compromised machine is only one of many in a distributed group called a botnet.  These systems are being controlled by remote users who use them for malicious attacks.  Most zombies are home computers that have been compromised, and their owners are completely unaware that their systems are being used for these attacks.   Because the owners are unaware, these computers are metaphorically compared to zombies.

In April 2008, 100 Billion spam messages were sent.  Spammers, on the average, send 559 Terabytes of content each day.  If you were to store all the spam for 30 days, you would consume 16.4 petabytes of storage.  This impacts organization’s bandwidth, storage, and productivity of their workers.

In the “old days”, spammers would send out large amounts of spam from a small number of sources.  It was easier to track and stop the sources.  Today, spammers are motivated by profit and are very sophisticated.  They have learned to get around a lot of the anti-spam software.  Also, the spammers are using Zombies.  As mentioned above, the problem with Zombies is that they are being sent by computers that have been compromised by a hacker or virus, the owners are unaware of them, and small amounts of spam are sent from each of a large number of sources making it harder for ISPs to detect spammers.  In fact, more than 85% of spam is sent by Zombies.  It also allows spammers to reduce their bandwidth costs and avoid detection by the ISPs.

The Botnets are growing rapidly as more computers are compromised.  Spammers rent botnets for content distribution campaigns and are used for click fraud, financial fraud, spam, credit card fraud, and are responsible for over 85% of all unwanted email which equates to 130 Billion messages!

Who is most impacted by Botnets? Everyone!  ISPs and MSPs and enterprises suffer the most because they deal with the largest volume of emails.

How do you protect yourself from Zombies? (It’s not a 100% guarantee, but it will help)

1)    Update Windows patches frequently

2)    Secure your network with a password that is not guessable and hard to break

3)    Use Windows Firewall to alert you of processes requesting network access

4)    Get a reliable anti-spam/virus product for your desktop

How do you know if your computer has been infected?  

Probably the easiest way is to note changes in the way your computer behaves. Sudden performance problems or frequent crashing could be signs of zombie behavior. A more technical approach would be the use of software that monitors network  activity and can alert you of sudden increases in bandwidth usage.

Here’s an article about some of the symptoms of a Zombie.

If your computer running slow, check out the processes under Task Manager. 

http://tweezersedge.com/archives/2005/02/000534.html

Hyun Kim, Bynari Inc.