Sour Krauts and Spam

German political spam has been flooding inboxes around the world. The messages contain right-wing content and links to extremist German websites.

The wave of right-wing German spam appears to be tied to the spread of a new virus called "Sober" version P. Sober has infected thousands if not millions of computers making them susceptible to exploitation by senders of internet spam.

The compromised systems are referred to as zombies. These types of systems are increasingly responsible for a large portion of spam email messages on the internet. Recently some blacklists used to filter email have suggested blocking entire networks of computers due to high rates of infection.

Commonly, the owners of the infected computers aren't even aware of the problem. They may only notice that their computer is for some reason less responsive than usual. Often, this kind of Trojan software is not detected by traditional virus scanners.

The messages appear to have been timed to correspond with the 60th anniversary of the ending of the last World War. Some political websites listed in the spam appear to be offline due to their heavy load. What's the German word for irony?

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