Michael Gracie 

If you think the whole botnet issue is bad now – zombiefied computers galore spewing more virus-laden pharmaceutical spam than you can shake a stick at – imagine what it will be like when everyone has one of these. I guess the bright side is…if it is stuck in a closet with no monitor, you [...]

I can’t help but smile with glee over this… The issue of zombies and the problems they cause on the networks has hit the New York Times. No, I am not happy because the New York Times is my favorite paper or anything; my joy comes from the awareness it is providing. Too many people [...]

Don’t believe anyone who wishes you a happy new year, at least if the greeting comes via email. UPDATE: The “Happy New Year” worm is still spreading on the net. Late to the punch…I say. You’d think those worms would know something about internet time (or is that the news I should be criticising?).

Time Magazine punted this year, and declared their “Person of the Year” was you. Yes, you. It was supposedly the year of user generated content – unfortunately, the magazine missed the boat. They forgot that all the user generated content sucks (Spamroll included) – everyone creating that content was too busy fighting viruses to producing [...]

CafePress, that bastion of free speech you can slap on a t-shirt, was hit by a DDOS attack on Tuesday. They are, of course, back up now, and the holiday shopping binge continues. I recollect CafePress being a .NET house – I guess hackers decided to leave Microsoft alone this year and go after their [...]

You’ll never know if your PC has been zombified unless you check. IT Observer gives you a few clues, but I will make it even simpler. Install a free copy of the ZoneAlarm firewall (and turn off the Windows firewall for a bit as well). Keep ZoneAlarm access messages on, and wait. If you start [...]

The underground anti-spam crusaders can chase IP addresses and domain names from forged headers all they want, but they are likely going to catch some ghosts, or zombies that is. MX Logic reports that for the third month in a row, more than 50% of all spam originated from zombie computers. This means that spam [...]

As if you were a bit skeptical about the idea that setting up a bigtime spam reporting system might not work that well, based on the fact that so much spam comes from zombied PCs whose owners have no idea what is going on, here’s something that might change your mind. According to MX Logic, [...]

I call this wishful thinking, because there is great software out there (like SpamAssassin) which still has trouble stopping spam. Nonetheless, the Australians think they can do a better job by getting email users involved in the fight, and are about to distribute some spam reporting software to assist. Unfortunately, much of the spam you [...]

AOL cannot be very happy with themselves right about now. Despite all the talk about how their network has been killing spam like no tomorrow, now they get to deal with more a more dangerous issue. A recent study suggests that the AOL network leads ISPs in zombied computers.