Fergie's Tech Blog

ZombieAlert Scours Corporate Networks For Spam-spewing PCs

Gregg Keizer writes in TechWeb News:

A U.K.-based security firm is touting a new service that scours corporate networks for zombies -- PCs that have been hijacked without the owner's knowledge and turned into spam-spewing engines.

Sophos on Wednesday launched the alert service, dubbed ZombieAlert, that warns business, educational, and government administrators when some of the machines on their networks turn into the walking dead. So-called "zombies" account for more than half the world's spam, said Sophos.

Tracking down zombies, however, isn't easy.

Rather than monitoring systems internally for evidence of spam zombies, Sophos analyzes the millions of messages passing through its spam traps -- sometimes called "honeypots" -- traces such spam to its originating domain and IP address, then notifies customers when one of their machines is found sending spam.

posted by Fergie @ 7/13/2005 12:25:00 PM