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by Mike Masnick

Wed, Dec 3rd 2003 12:09pm





Hijacked Computers Responsible For One-Third Of All Spam

from the you're-a-spammer-and-you-don't-even-know-it dept

Plenty of stories have been written about how many spammers are now using hijacked machines infected with some sort of trojan horse program to send out their spam. However, someone from an anti-virus company is saying that these "Remote Access Trojans (RATs)" are now responsible for one-third of all spam. Ouch. Of course, they don't back this up with any evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. They seem to be getting plenty of publicity for this statement - but don't give any suggestions on how to solve this problem. If they're hyping it so much, you'd think those same articles would tell people how to protect themselves. Since the issue is so widespread, and education is unlikely to help, you have to wonder if a better solution is to have the broadband ISPs help out by determining which machines have been turned into "zombies" and alerting the owners.

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    Chris, Dec 3rd, 2003 @ 12:38pm

    No Subject Given

    The free version of Zone Alarm solves the problem. Of course, expecting computer owners to take responsibility for their own equipment is probably asking too much. How about ISP's start shutting down accounts until the computers are safe? How hard can it be to write a script that watches port 25 for unusual bursts of data?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

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    Beck, Dec 3rd, 2003 @ 2:02pm

    Discovery and Removal

    I wonder if there are any tools to find and remove the "RATs"? Something similar to Ad-Aware. Anyone know?

    I wonder if the AV system scans would find these? Are they considered to be virii?

     

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