BYTE.com > Chaos Manor > 2004
Outsource This!
By Jerry Pournelle
December 6, 2004
(Zombie Wars
: Page 1 of 1 )
Column 292 (Continued from the Previous
Week)
Zombie
Zombies in voodoo are animated dead bodies subject to the will of a mambo. In the computer world, a zombie is a PC that has been infected with a virus that subjects it to the will of a hacker. The hacker may never have seen the computer, and for that matter, the current master may not be the one who infected the machine. If you know where to look you can rent or buy thousands of zombies (whether or not you get exclusive use, and how long you will get to keep them, depends in part on the honesty of the seller, which isn't likely to be very great).
Zombies can be used in several ways. The obvious one is to cause the machine to send all information it has to someone you didn't want to have it. That can include your work, your personal data, financial and other records kept on your computer, and anything else, including the history of where you've been on the Internet. I haven't heard of anyone being blackmailed for having pornography (especially kiddie porn) on his computer, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. For that matter, zombie software can download things you haven't asked for, then report you for having it.
The most common use for zombies is to send untraceable spam, or as invisible hosts for pornography including kiddie porn (it's a felony to have that on your hard drive; tough luck if your system is a zombie and you're caught dispensing it). Another use for zombies, particularly those bought or rented, is as agents for Denial of Service attacks on a particular web site. These happen all the time to businesses that have a vital interest in 24/7 online availability. That can include merchants, gambling and betting services, on-line games, and just about anything else. Typically a site will be forced off line by a short attack. Then comes an e-mail demanding that money be transferred to an off-shore account lest the attacks start up again. This sort of thing is no longer even rare, as you can discover by doing a Google on "zombie protection racket" where I found BYTE.com > Chaos Manor > 2004
|
