Here’s A Cheerful Thought
Computer security experts are saying that on a typical day some 40% of the computers connected to the internet are part of a botnet. The zombies are out in force, people.
Largely unnoticed by the public, botnets have come to inundate the Internet. On a typical day, 40% of the 800 million computers connected to the Internet are bots engaged in distributing e-mail spam, stealing sensitive data typed at banking and shopping websites, bombarding websites as part of extortionist denial-of-service attacks, and spreading fresh infections, says Rick Wesson, CEO of Support Intelligence, a San Francisco-based company that tracks and sells threat data.
"It's like a disease you can't even feel," Wesson says. "The mechanisms we use to protect our networks simply are not working."
The botnet problem shows no sign of easing. Security firm Damballa pinpointed 7.3 million unique instances of bots carrying out nefarious activities on an average day in January - an astronomical leap from a daily average of 333,000 in August 2006. That included botnet-delivered spam, which accounted for 91% of all e-mails in early March, up from 64% last June, says e-mail management firm Cloudmark.
The upshot of this deluge is profound, if not immediately obvious, says Adam O'Donnell, Cloudmark's director of emerging technology. Telecoms and Internet service providers must absorb the cost of carrying botnet traffic; they can be expected to pass that expense onto companies and consumers, he says. Meanwhile, tens of millions of botted computer users are experiencing degraded performance with no clue why.
If you are running a Microsoft OS and do not have up-to-date antivirus software and a solid firewall, you are part - or soon will be - of the problem. If your computer suddenly is running a lot slower than it used to, there is a substantial chance that you have a problem. If you are running Windows XP or Vista you can use the Windows Live OneCare free safety scanner to check for problems (you must use Internet Explorer for this). Trend Micro Housecall is also very powerful and is also free.
If you are not running antivirus, you really need to get off the internet. Seriously.
Geek Stuff | Gaius Monday, 17 March , 2008
By Sam, Monday, 17 March , 2008 @ 4:50 pm
Another way to tell if your PC is a zombie is if it starts to smell bad and develops a taste for human flesh.
By piscivorous, Monday, 17 March , 2008 @ 6:35 pm
Or you can be diligent about where you surf and what attachments you open. I have not run virus software for nearly 4 years now and repeated free scans show I have and have never had a problem.
By martian, Tuesday, 18 March , 2008 @ 1:39 pm
You’re confusing Zombies with Ghouls, Sam. Ghouls eat raw flesh, Zombies don’t eat. Both do, however, have a body odor problem as you mentioned.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 18 March , 2008 @ 5:27 pm
Ghouls eat dead flesh. Zombies dine on brains.