Fergie's Tech Blog

Is Your Computer a Criminal?

Kim Carney writes in The Red Tape Chronicles:

Your home computer may be committing a crime at this very moment. It might be sending out spam. It might be buying stock as part of a pump-and-dump scheme. Or it might be helping attack the Internet itself, silently and invisibly, as you read this story. And the odds your computer is a criminal are quickly rising.

The Web, some say, has been turned into an operating system for criminals. Computer viruses that hijack PCs and turn them into electronic robots, or “bots,” have become the killer app. The operation of networks of hijacked computers is so lucrative that hackers are actually fighting electronic wars over them, a story we will explore next week in part two of this series.

New hacker techniques make these virus attacks so subtle that there is no way you would know your computer is a criminal. And there is a growing sense among security experts that hackers have gained the upper hand in what was once a neck-and-neck arms race.

posted by Fergie @ 3/27/2007 09:57:00 AM