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Are You A Spam Zombie?

Author: robert | Posted: 23.07.2008 | Views: 23

Over the past few years you've all become familiar with theterms spam, spam filter, whitelists, blacklists and a wholemyriad of other terminology associated with the problem of spam.You now have to add a new and extremely worrying phrase to thatlist - spam zombie.

With the net closing in around them spammers are looking for newand more inventive ways to send out their junk email. Spamfilters and challenge response systems are becomingprogressively 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 oldB movies with groaning zombies chasing the terrified actressthrough a castle, swamp or whatever low cost setting the movierevolved around. Spam zombies are, however, far more real andfar more dangerous.

A spam zombie is when your computer is taken over by a type ofvirus called a Trojan. Once this Trojan virus is on yourcomputer it sets up an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)application which allows it to begin sending email directly fromyour PC to tens of thousands of victims. This all happensinvisibly in the background and can be difficult to detect foreven the experienced computer user.

How do these Trojans get onto your computer? As in most casesthey come from porn, warez or similar sites. One of the firstspam zombie trojans to appear became available via a link onsites promising viewers free access to a porno webcam. One clicklater and the Trojan is installed on your computer ready to sendout spam. Phatbot and Proxy-Guzu are two of the more commonTrojans used for the purpose of turning your computer into aspam zombie.

How can you check if your computer has become a spam zombie?Make absolutely certain that both your anti-virus and firewallsoftware have current detection signatures and have beencompletely patched and updated. Working online without takingthese necessary security precautions is simply asking fortrouble.

Internet Service Providers are under huge pressure to quarantinethe IP address of any computer which has been turned into a spamzombie. This is done on the basis that the ISP risks theirentire IP range being blacklisted or banned by some spamfiltering services or companies.

The very least you owe yourself is to run a full virus andspyware scan on your computer today. You might be unpleasantlysurprised at what you'll find lurking there

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