iTWire - 10 million zombies go after Google and Microsoft users brains

10 million zombies go after Google and Microsoft users brains

by Davey Winder
Monday, 28 July 2008
Page 1 of 2 No longer the stuff of low-budget movies, zombies are invading the Internet: around 10 million of them in the last three months alone. The horror is revealed in a new report which shows that Google Adwords and Microsoft users brains are amongst the most sought after zombie food... We all hate it, but spam has been around for so long that it has become if not a truly accepted part of Internet life then at least one that we just begrudgingly deal with. The trouble is, as a new email threat trend report issued by Cyberoam today indicates, spam no longer wants to just sell you stuff it also wants to suck your brains. Register now to win a Canon EOS 500D Spam and email based malware is on the up, and the Cyberoam report shows that there were some 10 million zombies active during the second quarter of this year pushing that infected rot in our direction. According to the report authors, the vast majority of zombie IP addresses are dynamic and the zombie botmasters have managed to succeed in causing large scale damage simply by deactivating the IPs causing the new attacks and switching instead between multiple other IPs in order to bypass traditional security solutions. Internet Service Providers have been targeted by the zombie botnet masters who have exploited ISP infrastructure in order to send out the spam payload. No wonder there have been people complaining in support groups that outbound email is getting blocked, as happens when IP ranges get abused in this way. Any ISP worth its salt should not, of course, be vulnerable to such open mail relay problems. The users of those that are will quickly discover that as well as not having the most reliable of email delivery services, the zombies will drain ISP network resources and slow network speeds as well. But it is not just service providers who have felt the force of the 10 million strong zombie army. Google Adwords and Microsoft users have also been particularly hard hit, the study reporting that attacks on these users have hugely increased. How are the zombies attacking email users brains? Find out on page 2... CONTINUES << First page < 1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>