Microsoft investigating 13 spam operations as part of a call to action against zombies
Microsoft is investigating 13 spam operations it believes sent millions of junk mail messages through a single PC that the Redmond, Wash.-based developer purposefully set up as a "zombie," the company said Thursday.
Microsoft's action, which was done in conjunction with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Consumer Action, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, was part of a call to arms against zombies, compromised computers that are used without their owners' permission to send spam, launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and spread worms and viruses.
"The widespread use of zombie computers to commit crimes over the Internet presents a very real danger to law-abiding computer users," said Tim Cranton, the director of Microsoft's Internet Safety division.
Earlier this year, Cranton said, Microsoft set up a "clean" PC, then infected it with malicious code commonly used by attackers to turn a computer into a zombie. Researchers then monitored the PC's use of the Internet for 20 days, and tallied the number of messages sent through it.
