I am glad to see someone taking this zombie problem seriously! For the longest time, zombie networks have been wreaking havoc and causing problems for millions. With any luck, the FCC will have some success with this latest attack on scum.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in conjunction with regulatory bodies in about 30 countries, is about to launch a new education campaign directed at ISPs. Its message? The zombies are out of control.

These “zombie” networks account for a large percentage of unsolicited e-mail being sent on the Internet, said Don Blumenthal, Internet lab coordinator at the FTC. “I’ve seen estimates that anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of the spam out there is processed through (zombie networks),” he said. “It is certainly a critical problem.”

Attackers use malicious software distributed over the Internet to gain control over unsecured PCs and servers. They then use these “zombie” systems to do things like launch denial of service (DoS) attacks, or send unsolicited e-mail, generally without the knowledge of the system’s owner.

An average of 157,000 new zombies are identified each day, and much of the unwanted zombie activity is now coming from outside of the U.S., according to security company CipherTrust (Profile, Products, Articles) Inc. [Read the rest]