Fergie's Tech Blog

Microsoft's Decoy Zombie: Microsoft Teams with FTC and Consumer Action to Promote PC Protection

Via Microsoft.

Today, Microsoft, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Consumer Action, a public watchdog and education group, launched a campaign aimed at helping consumers prevent their computers from getting turned into zombies.

Timed to coincide with National Cyber Security Awareness Month and Halloween on Oct. 31, the “Don’t Get Tricked on Halloween” campaign alerts computer users to the threat of zombie computers and how to protect their personal computers (PCs) from being infected with malicious code. In addition, Microsoft is announcing a legal enforcement action that for the first time specifically targets illegal e-mail operations that connect to zombie computers to send spam.

“The only way to slow the spread of zombies and other online threats is by going after them as resolutely and in as many ways as possible,” says Tim Cranton, director of Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement programs.

Microsoft said it has filed "John Doe" lawsuits against the operators of 13 spam organizations that use illegal "zombie" computers to send their spam. The company held a press conference today with officials from the Federal Trade Commission to announce the lawsuits, filed in Washington State's King Country court on August 17.

Microsoft tracked down the spam operations by intentionally infecting a PC with some malicious code known to turn unprotected computers into zombies. The company said that within 20 days, the PC received more than 5 million requests to send 18 million spam e-mails. These requests contained advertisements for more than 13,000 unique domains. (Microsoft said it "cordoned off" its zombie to prevent it from actually sending out any spams.)

posted by Fergie @ 10/27/2005 07:49:00 AM