Are You A Spam Zombie?
By Niall Roche |
Over the past few years you've all become familiar with the terms spam, spam
filter, whitelists, blacklists and a whole myriad of other terminology
associated with the problem of spam. You now have to add a new and extremely
worrying phrase to that list - spam zombie.
With the net closing in
around them spammers are looking for new and more inventive ways to send out
their junk email. Spam filters and challenge response systems are becoming
progressively more intelligent and blocking more spam each day. What was a
spammer to do? The spammers took the next step - infiltrating your PC and using
it as a spamming tool.
When most of you think of the word zombie you're
reminded of old B movies with groaning zombies chasing the terrified actress
through a castle, swamp or whatever low cost setting the movie revolved around.
Spam zombies are, however, far more real and far more dangerous.
A spam
zombie is when your computer is taken over by a type of virus called a Trojan.
Once this Trojan virus is on your computer it sets up an SMTP (Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol) application which allows it to begin sending email directly
from your PC to tens of thousands of victims. This all happens invisibly in the
background and can be difficult to detect for even the experienced computer
user.
How do these Trojans get onto your computer? As in most cases they
come from porn, warez or similar sites. One of the first spam zombie trojans to
appear became available via a link on sites promising viewers free access to a
porno webcam. One click later and the Trojan is installed on your computer ready
to send out spam. Phatbot and Proxy-Guzu are two of the more common Trojans used
for the purpose of turning your computer into a spam zombie.
How can you
check if your computer has become a spam zombie? Make absolutely certain that
both your anti-virus and firewall software have current detection signatures and
have been completely patched and updated. Working online without taking these
necessary security precautions is simply asking for trouble.
Internet
Service Providers are under huge pressure to quarantine the IP address of any
computer which has been turned into a spam zombie. This is done on the basis
that the ISP risks their entire IP range being blacklisted or banned by some
spam filtering services or companies.
The very least you owe yourself is
to run a full virus and spyware scan on your computer today. You might be
unpleasantly surprised at what you'll find lurking there.
About the Author
This article provided
courtesy of www.Spam-site.com which reviews
spam blocker software and other anti spam utilties.
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