Spam Wars: FTC & Partners Target Spam Zombies

May 26, 2005
(CoolAvenues News Wire)

In a move to curb exponential increase in spamming, FTC (Federal Trade Commission) along with 35 partners from more than 20 counties, is going to target spamming home computers (also known as zombie) which are sending millions of spam e-mails on the net without the knowledge of the owners of these computers.

Spammers use hidden software that allows them to hijack consumers' home computers and route spam through them. By routing their emails through "zombie" computers, the spammers are able to hide the true origin of the spam from consumers and make it more difficult for law enforcement to find them. Consumers often do not discover that they themselves have been sending spam.

FTC & its partners will send letters to some 3000 ISPs under its Operation "Operation Spam Zombies" and will ask ISPs to disconnect these computers and employ various protective measures to prevent hijacking of home-users' computers by spammers. The proposed preventive actions are: -

• Blocking a common Internet port used for e-mail when possible;

• Applying rate-limiting controls for e-mail relays;

• Identifying computers that are sending a typical amount of e-mails and take steps to determine if the computer is acting as a spam zombie. When necessary, quarantine the affected computer until the source of the problem is removed;

• Providing plain-language information for customers on how to keep their home computers secure; and

• Providing or pointing their customers to easy-to-use tools to remove zombie code if their computers become infected.

The details of Operation Zombie are available at the following URL:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/zombie/index.htm

Spam, a term used for unsolicited commercial e-mail, has become a very serious and grave problem for ISPs & users and is considered as one of the greatest risk to the Internet. By a rough estimate, around 80%of the e-mail traffic on the Internet is spam and consumes precious CPU, bandwidth and time of users & net administrators.

This year's campaign follows two similar campaigns targeting other spam anonymizing techniques: "Operation Secure Your Server" (2004) and a campaign against "Open Relays" (2003).

Concluded.

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