Home PCs attack the Internet

Last week's attack on the Internet root servers is being blamed on botnets of zombie computers. And why not, the number of computers being compromised by spyware is horrendous. We see a half a dozen each week.

Convergence is a buzz word in the IT industry. The worrying thing about the malware epidemic is how the bad guys are converging: Spammers, phishers , spyware, phishers and virus writers are all coming together and sharing tactics and compromised machines.

The spam epidemic is a good example. One of the best protections from spam were the black lists of compromised servers and open relays. The problem now is that we have hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of compromised home PCs.

Unsecured wireless networks are also to blame. One client of ours was getting regularly disconnected for abusing their service. It turned out their wireless router (not setup by us) had no security and someone was using it to send spam.

The lesson, as the EETimes article linked above says, is that all computer users have a responsibility to secure their computers. If they don't, they may be responsible for spam, phishing scams and attacks on the Internet DNS servers.