20,000 Zombies for $3000!!

[klah]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/n...9-08-zombieprice_x.htm

Going price for network of zombie PCs: $2,000-$3,000

In the calculus of Internet crime, two of the most sought-after commodities are zombie PCs and valid e-mail addresses.

One indication of the going rate for zombie PCs comes from a June 11 posting on SpecialHam.com, an electronic forum for spammers. The asking price for use of a network of 20,000 zombie PCs: $2,000 to $3,000. Such networks typically are used to broadcast spam and phishing scams and to spread e-mail viruses designed mainly to create yet more zombies.

Zombie networks can be sophisticated. Last fall, a small Internet service provider asked cybersleuth Don Bowman to find out which of its 70,000 subscribers were broadcasting spam. Its network was generating so much spam, other ISPs threatened to blacklist it.

Bowman discovered that e-mail would blast from 20 PCs for a brief period. After a pause, another fire-hydrant-like surge gushed from a different group of 20 PCs. On average, each machine disgorged 630 pieces of e-mail an hour. "It wasn't natural," says Bowman, chief software architect for security firm Sandvine. "No one can type that fast."

His conclusion: An intruder was deploying squads of zombies in rotating waves. Why? Probably so the unwitting zombie owner would tolerate performance slowdowns that came and went ? and investigate no further.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/st...rce-Tactics-36476.html

A common defense adopted by ISPs is to monitor activity on port 25, the port most commonly used by spammers to avoid an ISP's outbound mail servers and ship their annoying payloads directly to other ISP's inbound servers.

If an ISP sees an unusual volume of mail emanating from one of its users on port 25, it will turn off that user's access to the port.

The technique can be quite effective. After it began a program in June to shut down port 25 to spammers, Philadelphia-based Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSK) Latest News about Comcast, the nation's largest broadband ISP, reduced unsolicited e-mail originating on its network by 80 percent, spokesperson Jeanne Russo told LinuxInsider.

All spammers must DIE!!

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: klah
All spammers must DIE!!

*gets his shotgun*

:|

Kind of cool when you think about it.

But if you use these RBL's, you never have to worry about it. Block all dynamic IP address ranges and you solve the zombie problem. Then block the known spam servers, and anything coming from foreign domains (that you would never expect to get email from, like Korea), and you're left with a small percentage of emails that can be filtered by content.

 

[nageov3t]

dude, I'd pay $3,000 for an army of undead.

 

[paruhd0x]

A zombie could come pretty handy. Shaun of the Dead proved it so!

 

[Scarpozzi]

Calling them Zombie PCs sure does make it sound scary.

 

[Schadenfroh]

anyone up for assembling an elite crew of people to take out spam zombies, people who create them, people who are stupid enough to let their pcs become them, take out lawyers from SCO, RIAA, and rambus and judges that allow patents on stuff like hyperlinks, PDAs, mp3 players?

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
anyone up for assembling an elite crew of people to take out spam zombies, people who create them, people who are stupid enough to let their pcs become them, take out lawyers from SCO, RIAA, and rambus and judges that allow patents on stuff like hyperlinks, PDAs, mp3 players, and hyperlinks?

Yea, in a few years I hope to own a company, with a department that does just that.

 

[psiu]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: klah
All spammers must DIE!!

*gets his shotgun*

:|

Kind of cool when you think about it.

But if you use these RBL's, you never have to worry about it. Block all dynamic IP address ranges and you solve the zombie problem. Then block the known spam servers, and anything coming from foreign domains (that you would never expect to get email from, like Korea), and you're left with a small percentage of emails that can be filtered by content.

And hope you don't know anyone who's going to email you from home?

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
anyone up for assembling an elite crew of people to take out spam zombies, people who create them, people who are stupid enough to let their pcs become them, take out lawyers from SCO, RIAA, and rambus and judges that allow patents on stuff like hyperlinks, PDAs, mp3 players, and hyperlinks?

Yea, in a few years I hope to own a company, with a department that does just that.

The Wailing Guitar Department

 

[virtueixi]

Originally posted by: loki8481
dude, I'd pay $3,000 for an army of undead.

Me too!

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: psiu

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: klah
All spammers must DIE!!

*gets his shotgun*

:|

Kind of cool when you think about it.

But if you use these RBL's, you never have to worry about it. Block all dynamic IP address ranges and you solve the zombie problem. Then block the known spam servers, and anything coming from foreign domains (that you would never expect to get email from, like Korea), and you're left with a small percentage of emails that can be filtered by content.

And hope you don't know anyone who's going to email you from home?

Smtp should never come from the local machine. All legitimate email goes through the ISP's mail server, which is not a dynamic address.