http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-5715633.html
Feds to fight the zombies
May 23, 2005, 4:00 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh
Remote-controlled "zombie" networks operated by bottom-feeding spammers
have become a serious problem that requires more industry action, the
Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce on Tuesday.
The FTC and more than 30 of its counterparts abroad are planning to
contact Internet service providers and urge them to pay more attention
to what their customers are doing online. Among the requests:
identifying customers with suspicious e-mailing patterns, quarantining
those computers and offering help in cleaning the zombie code off the
hapless PCs.
To be sure, computers infected by zombie programs and used to churn out
spam are a real threat to the future of e-mail. One report by security
company Sophos found that compromised PCs are responsible for 40 percent
of the world's spam--and that number seems to be heading up, not down.
But government pressure--even well-intentioned--on Internet providers to
monitor their users raises some important questions.
[...remainder snipped...]
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