p2pnet - rss feed: Operation Spam Zombies
p2pnet.net News:- The US Federal Trade Commission has signed up with 35 other foreign government agencies from more than 20 countries to declare war on spam “zombies.”
Zombie systems are computers hi-jacked without owners’ knowledge by spammers who then use them to send out billions of emails ranging from Nigerian 419 cons to pharmaceutical ads.
“Operation Spam Zombies” is, says the FTC, an international campaign to “educate Internet Service Providers and other Internet connectivity providers about hijacked, or ‘zombie’ computers that spammers use to flood in-boxes here and abroad.”
Twenty members of the London Action Plan and 16 government agencies will send letters to more than 3,000 ISPs around the world, urging them to employ protective measures to prevent their customers’ computers from being hijacked by spammers.
The measures include:
- Blocking a common Internet port used for e-mail when possible;
- Applying rate-limiting controls for e-mail relays;
- Identifying computers that are sending atypical amounts of e-mail and take steps to determine if the computer is acting as a spam zombie. When necessary, quarantine the affected computer until the source of the problem is removed;
- Providing plain-language information for customers on how to keep their home computers secure; and
- Providing or pointing their customers to easy-to-use tools to remove zombie code if their computers become infected.
The next phase of the operation will be to identify possible spam zombies and ISPs operating the networks that are hosting them.
“The partners will then notify these providers of the problem and urge them to implement corrective measures,” says the FTC,which has posted a special project web page.
The FTC, US Department of Commerce, Involved are agencies from Albania, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the US Department of Homeland Security.
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May 24th, 2005 at 6:51 pm
Blocking port 25 will help with the email spam. However, there must be more done about blog and peer to peer spam. Attacking spamvertised sites is my favorite way. I have been doing this for years without legal reprecussions.
May 24th, 2005 at 9:26 pm
Blocking port 25 will help block spam, but it also blocks my emails being sent from my computer for legitimate reasons. I rather them find a way to stop spam either on the users computer or on the receiving end then blanket blocking of the port 25 which will hurt the non-spammers.
May 24th, 2005 at 10:24 pm
youll never stop spam any more than youll stop obnoxious phone calls while youre having dinner or junk snail mail
May 25th, 2005 at 2:20 am
Port 25 should be unblocked for anyone who requests it to be unblocked if that person agrees to accept all responsibility for any spam originating from his or her ip address.
May 25th, 2005 at 3:07 am
I manually block port 25 so that it isn’t needed that my isp do this. I don’t use outlook to access email so it isn’t an issue. Nor is outlook installed, having been removed long ago.
I wish others would do the same, it would help make life easier on us all.