FTC targets zombies sending spam

Today, the Federal Trade Commission launched "Operation Spam Zombies," a campaign to educate Internet service providers about hijacked "zombie" computers. A zombie is a computer that has had software secretly installed on it which allows a spammer to send large amounts of spam and mask their identity, making it harder for law enforcement officers to find them. E-mail security vendor MX Logix estimates that 44 percent of spam comes from such zombie computers connected via "always-on" broadband to the Internet.

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