Zombie Computers

Is Your Computer A Zombie?

In The Night of the Living Dead, zombies ate brains in a furious hunger. Computers affected by Trojans can be used to launch attacks against targeted Internet sites. A zombie computer (often shortened as zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, a computer virus, or a trojan horse. Most owners of zombie computers are unaware that their system is being used in this way. Because the owner tends to be unaware, these computers are metaphorically compared to zombies.

A zombie computer, or “drone,” is a computer that has been clandestinely compromised by hacking tools which allow a third party to control the computer and its resources remotely. When the zombie computer connects to the Internet the remote hacker can secretly make contact with the computer to mine data from it or use it for any number of purposes.

Once a computer picks up a rootkit, it becomes an “unwilling partner in crime” of the hacker, blindly following commands, leading to the name “zombie computer.” A hacker has full access to data and resources on a zombie computer.

A hacker that compromises many computers can combine them into a zombie network, called a “botnet.” Botnets are used to send spam, attack websites, perpetuate phishing scams, commit click-fraud, and grow larger botnets by infecting new computers.

Zombie networks have loads of other common uses. Zombies can be used to obscure the attackers’ location. By using a zombie the attacker can send spam or pull off network attacks without it being easily tracked back to an IP associated with the attacker. They use other folk's computers for the task.

Often when you download and execute an innocent looking attachment in an email, off the Web or from infected media, the Trojan installs itself to your PC’s system. Often, the attacker will share the list of zombied systems with others, giving unfettered access to their collection of zombie machines by other ill-intended criminals. Zombies can be used to conduct distributed denial-of-service attacks, a term which refers to the orchestrated flooding of target websites by armies of zombie computers.

Unfortunately, the risk of your system falling victim to a zombie computer attack might be greater than you imagine. In highly publicized reports from 2005, one dismantled botnet controlled by three young men in the Netherlands included 1.5 million zombie computers.

  * Avoid installing programs from untrusted sources.
  * Don’t allow untrusted websites to install software.
By taking these precautions you will greatly reduce the chances of being targeted by a botnet or zombie computer scanning for new drones.

Before a zombie hunter can kill some zombies he has to find them. Despite what some newer movies portray, zombies should be slow. If the zombie is being used as part of a distributed denial of service attack or to host pirated movies its network utilization will likely skyrocket, while other programs slow to a crawl.

 Most malware detection programs will also detect other malware that's associated with zombified computers. To minimize the growing threat of becoming assimilated into a drone:

  * Keep your anti-spyware and anti-virus software current.
  * Use a firewall.
  * Delete spam without opening it.
  * Avoid installing programs from untrusted sources.
  * Don’t allow untrusted websites to install software.
  * Keep your operating system and Web browser current with the latest hotfixes.
  * Back up your system each week after a clean scan.

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