It is bad enough that we have to remain guarded against those who would do our PCs harm. Viruses, spyware - it is enough to drive a guy nuts! Now we have the added bonus of people buying and selling PCs that have been taken as zombie boxes! Where does it end?

Not [the] flesh-eating kind zombies of course, but networks of zombie PCs. Even as anti-spyware legislation makes its way through Congress, selling networks of compromised PCs is becoming big business these days. According [to] a recent post on a spam forum, a network of 20,000 compromised PCs goes for between US$2,000-3,000. Such networks are becoming increasingly sophisticated tools for churning out mind-numbing amounts of junk e-mail.