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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 6/014/2006 |
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Microsoft releases
statistics on virus and zombie infections, and they
are truly staggering. I have previously done a show on this topic in February of last year Is your computer a Zombie ? and it’s apparent that the problem is getting worse. It’s like a scenario from a bad 50’s sci-fi movie; Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Night of the Living Dead, or kind of like “The Blob” for you Baby boomers who might remember that Jello-ish thriller – but now it’s 2006 and the plot is that an evil alien has captured your home pc and it is completely under its power – unknown to you - its owner – and your computer has become a Zombie !! Spammers have traditionally used software to route their spam through a mass of "zombie machines" to reach recipients. Zombies are computers connected to the Internet that have been infected with malicious programs that give hackers control over the machines. This might be a spyware program that downloaded itself to your computer without your knowing anything about it. Usually these are pc’s using highspeed connections; DSL or cable modem, but not always. An increasing amount of spam is being sent to zombie machines and then passed through servers at the zombie machines' Internet service providers before reaching recipients. Windows security consultant Brian Krebs recently reported on Microsoft
Releasing Windows Malware Stats:
“ Microsoft gave the world a rare glimpse of its view on just how bad the virus and zombie or bot problem has gotten for Windows users worldwide. The data comes from 15 months' worth of experience scanning computers with its "malicious-software removal tool," a free component that Microsoft offers Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 users when they download security updates from Microsoft. (You can run this tool online , or download it to your computer and run it. The only restriction is that you have to have a legitimate copy of Windows to do so. . The tool has been run approximately 2.7 billion times by at least 270 million unique computers, leading to the removal of 16 million instances of malicious software from Windows-based computers over the past 15 months. Microsoft said. Sixty-two percent of those computers had Trojan horse programs on them, and that most of those Trojan programs took the form of zombie or bot software, which allows attackers to remotely control the infected machines for use in all sorts of online criminal activities, from knocking Web sites offline to spreading viruses, spam, adware and spyware “ Unless you have a sophisticated internet security program, your own anti-virus software might not be protecting you from these zombies, so it would be prudent for you to check your computer with these Microsoft malware utilities. If your computer is a zombie, the spam it sends can be tracked back to you, unless you’re using a program like the Anonymizer which I’ve reviewed recently which protects your internet identity. So to be safe, make sure that innocent looking pc of yours doesn’t have a secret life of its own. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2006 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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