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 was provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews spam blocking software
[http://www.spam-site.com]
and other anti spam utilties.


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