How Much For A Network Of Zombies?

from the going-cheap... dept

USA Today is running a series of articles about various "bad things" happening on the internet, from spyware to phishing attacks to zombies, and one of the sidebar items looks more closely at the zombie problem, suggesting a network of 20,000 zombie machines can be leased for $2,000 to $3,000. Of course, they don't say what the terms of the lease are. Is it for a day? A month? A certain number of emails or DDoS attacks sent? One interesting (and slightly scary) note, however, is that some zombie networks now appear to be using a rotational system to avoid detection. Rather than have all 20,000 zombie machines blasting spam at once, it rotates. This way, not only is it tougher to track down which machines are actually zombified, the owners of those machines are much less likely to notice there's any kind of a problem with their machine -- and, thus, much less likely to clean the machine to free it from its zombie masters.

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