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A Dispatch

« Welcome to the "Spam Wars" Blog | Main | Foreign Language Spam »

November 13, 2004

Dictionaries Gone Wild!

Dictionary email attacks really shot up here on Friday. Instead of the usual 5000-7000 attempts, the zombie PCs around the world tried over 11,000 times to send mail to invalid addresses at my venerable dannyg.com domain. Other spam activity here seemed (alas) normal.

I believe that the army of zombie PCs being remote controlled by some Really Bad People is an enormous potential threat to the Internet. I have my fingers crossed that the infections and the control codes are diverse enough to prevent one controller from taking over the world's zombies. In the meantime, please, everybody install, update, and use accredited antivirus and antispyware software (i.e., not the stuff offered to you in spam messages or popup ads). And tell your friends!

Posted on November 13, 2004 at 08:46 AM