June 24, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The Anti-Spam Technical Alliance, an organization which includes Yahoo (yahoo.com), Microsoft (microsoft.com), America Online (aol.com) and EarthLink (earthlink.net), have called for an industry-wide effort to prevent “zombies” from being used to launch spam and malicious viruses, according to a Washington Post report. Zombies are computers that have been taken over by hackers and spammers, who then use the machine as a launching pad for malicious attacks. The Anti-Spam Technical Alliance is urging all Internet service providers to police their networks more vigorously and to cut off machines being used as zombies.
The anti-spam organization said the zombie problem has gone unchecked because service providers are not monitoring their networks adequately. Large Internet service providers typically monitor their networks, identifying machines that send out unusually large amounts of email. When found, these machines have their Internet access blocked until the owner comes forward.
