Spam Zombies - Hacking Pays

It just dawned on me what so insidious about spam email sent by zombie computers.

Zombie spam commonly employs tactics that fool most spam email stopper programs.

There have always been thousands, if not millions of people with strong computer skills who enjoyed "hacking." The word hacking (and hacker) of course have many definitions. For this article I'm referring to those with at least some degree of maliciousness.

Spamming pays. That's why people do it. If you can somehow convince an army of thousands of computers to spam on your behalf, it pays even more.

The same concerns also apply to adware, spyware and other malicious software. In the last few years we have entered an era where someone with solid technical skills and few ethics can profit by stealing the resources of others. Spamming itself of course has an element of this, but taking over innocent bystanders' computers is all the more alarming.

Software to hijack other computers can be readily purchased on popular auction sites. Sometimes it's even packages with an email list. There are dozens of different profit sharing programs, with few restrictions on how you recruit customers. It's a recipe for destruction.

If creators of malware are the antagonists in this great game, wouldn't authors of software to stop junk email be the logical protagonists? Just a thought.

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