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 have an excuse when the police show up.

UPDATE: Here’s a roundup on the home server, for the curious.

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 just don’t get it (until the police show up)…

Serry Winkler, a sales representative in Denver, said that she had turned off the network-security software provided by her Internet service provider because it slowed performance to a crawl on her PC, which was running Windows 98. A few months ago four sheriff’s deputies pounded on her apartment door to confiscate the PC, which they said was being used to order goods from Sears with a stolen credit card. The computer, it turned out, had been commandeered by an intruder who was using it remotely.

That’s one way to find out your computer has been hijacked. And while reading the paper isn’t going to fix the problem, at least it might make you aware that one could exist.

UPDATE: Bruce Schneier agrees - popular attention is a good thing.

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 anything of value.

Damn it, 2006 wasn’t the year of user generated content - it was was the Year of the Zombies!

Well, maybe Time did get it right; they just didn’t know it.

UPDATE: Even Microsoft gets it. Now, let’s see if they do something about it, since last time I checked Linux and OS X installs weren’t getting hijacked too often.

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 customers instead.

I wonder if those zombie networks are responsible for the Denver blizzard too, as the malls around here are just re-opening as well.

UPDATE: While CafePress is worried about staying up for the holiday season, Michael Arrington is wondering why they don’t use Flash. He must own Adobe stock.

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 seeing all kinds of popups coming from your taskbar, with no applications active, that is likely the zombie talking. Those popups signify your computer trying to access the internet every which way from Sunday, with spamming and further infection attempts high on the priority list.

If you are an everyday joe, you can pick up some anti-virus tools to clean things up. If you are a Microsoft executive, you just reformat your hard drive and start over.

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 hunters could soon be blacklisting my grandma (I take that back - she’s on a Mac).

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, roughly 62% of spam came from zombies during the month of June, and it has been growing fast.

Fortunately, Sophos is coming to the rescue. They are about to release a product designed to let companies know about spammer-controlled machines on their networks. My guess is there will be another product release soon, designed to report zombie machines to ISPs, then half the world will get bounced off the net.

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 see in your inbox each day does not come from a bigtime spammer - it comes from their unknowing minions - meaning zombie computers.

Zombies are machines (usually Windows machines) that have been infected via trojan programs. One of the main goals in infecting a computer is to hijack it for spamming purposes. Meaning, there are a whole lot of folks out in cyberspace that are spamming, and they don’t even know it. One of the culprits is broadband, with its always on connection, and the other is usually Windows, with its “always weak” security. And computer hijacking is going nowhere but up, up, up.

If you still don’t get it, then read this latest trojan warning carefully. The trojan in question is designed to hijack the recipient computer, for use in none other than spamming!

The Australians are about to start chasing ghosts, its just that the ghost will be walking and moaning.

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.

Something here just doesn’t make sense. If they lead all ISPs in zombie computers, then how can they be reducing spam so much. One of the main purposes of a zombie machine is to send out spam! Are they only counting spam that doesn’t originate from their own network? And what are they doing to protect the outside world?

With AOL facing a dwindling subscriber base, I wonder if they are going to be able to take the blow of cutting zombie machines of the network, much like other ISPs have done.