Infected Windows PCs Now Source Of 80% Of Spam

twitter writes "The Register is reporting a study by Sandvine.com that blames Microsoft Zombies for 80% of all spam. The study goes on to claim that 90% filtering is not effective given the unprecedented volume and that sophisticated trojans are able to drop spam directly on end user's computers despite current efforts. Just another cost of supporting Microsoft, I suppose."

Comments

Re:An Idea

[kidlinux]

Most blacklist services these days list all dynamic IPs for most Internet Service Providers. I get an occasional bounced email because my server is on one of those IPs. Annoying as hell. But at least I can add those kind of hosts to my transport map and have email destined for them routed through my ISP's mail server.

Re:Is this suprising?

[beat.bolli]

And the next generation of zombie programs will do a simple DNS lookup for the mailserver of the current domain and start sending spam through the ISP's mailserver.

Fortunately, this will not help, because most (bigger) ISPs have separate servers for incoming and outgoing mail, and there are no DNS entries for outgoing mail!

Re:Once again, I'll have to disagree with this.

[Atrax]

> Why is WindowsXP still vulnerable to the same
> viruses that Windows95 was?

Hate to say it, but it's because Windows XP-generation and its apps still have the same objective as Windows 95 and its apps did.

Functionality first, security second, internet be damned

Win95 was a pre-internet age OS. yes, the internet was around, but the vast majority of machines with 95 installed were not connected, or were connected on crappy slow modems at best. Windows XP's ethos has simply failed to keep up with the progress in internet connectivity.

Now, some users have kept up - I could run a 95 machine as securely as an XP machine right now, but the market has grown out of proportion to the average computing knowledge of the market, partly as a result of the simplicity and availability of windows. Unfortunately, the default configuration, until Windows Server 2003, has not had internet security in mind.

A non-net connected, or well firewalled, XP machine is pretty safe, just as a 95 machine is.

Re:Once again, I'll have to disagree with this.

[stoborrobots]

Actually, the real story goes that with months left before shipping Win 95, Gates decided that "The Internet" was the killer app. So the entire company turned on the spot and integrated "The Internet" into the OS.

Going from a non-networked, single-user OS to the hyperconnected Internet client that Win 95 was supposed to be in just a few months must have been difficult... Probably not a lot of time for all those paradigms to be re-thought...

Re:Yes and

[etymxris]

Is it really so hard to believe that spammers would prefer hiding behind infected machines? There certainly isn't a lack of infected machines to use. Just look at shady sites like this if you need some convincing.

Did you read the story?

[tonyray]

Two points: (1) the story never mentions Microsoft and (2) it says filters are 90% effective, not ineffective.

As an ISP our biggest OS problem is Linux. Proportionally it causes far more problems than Microsoft. Why? Because Linux users sit around saying "poor MS user" and don't even know they've been hacked. And the majority have been hacked. If you say "Oh, that can't be" then you've just joined the crowd :P