Grim rise in infected PCs provokes “National Zombie Awareness Week”

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Friday, 27 February 2009 16:49

The rapid rise of infected personal computers has driven the Internet Industry Association (IIA) to launch a world first - “National Zombie Awareness Week”.

A new site, zombieweek.com will alert all online users to check their PCs for malicious software and remedy problems.

“While we’d prefer to highlight the benefits of the internet, we must alert users to the harm they face should their PC be ‘zombied’. The pronounced increase in infection rates cannot be ignored. Our main concern is the damage to trust and confidence in the digital economy arising from the zombie threat,” said IIA chief executive Peter Coroneos.

Risks include:

huge broadband data charges
loss of personal data, including banking details
loss of control of their computer which can be harnessed by organized crime, terrorists and scammers
lost productivity while their computers are restored.

What is the threat?
A “zombie botnet” is a group of PCs infected with malicious software. Called “zombies” or bots (from ‘robots’), they can be used remotely to carry out organised attacks against other computer systems and enable mass delivery of spam and scams.

“Its not just about opening email attachments anymore”, said Coroneos. “Infection these days can occur by an inadequately protected computer accessing popular websites that have been compromised. These ‘drive by’ attacks are the latest tool of cyber-criminals.”

Botnets alone were responsible for 85 per cent of all global spam in February 2008.

Since then, the number of infected computers in Australia more than doubled from 76,000 to 174,000 according to online fraud and abuse control firm ThreatMetrix.

Tracking almost 200 million compromised computers, ThreatMetrix estimates a 20% increase of tracked infected computers globally in the past year.

Furthermore, the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team’s 2008 survey of home security indicates

11 % of home users never update their PC’s operating system
30% clicked on links in spam email
23% had confirmed malware infections - of these, 14% took no action to fix the problem
Of the 36% of respondents with home WiFi networks, 9% do not secure them

"The threat posed by botnets is much greater than these numbers would indicate. Cyber-criminals use botnets for multiple attacks over a period of time,” Coroneos said.

To raise this to the home agenda, the IIA’s awareness campaign draws on the classic late 60’s zombie movie classic, Night of the Living Dead. Three brief video streams have been placed on YouTube to summarise the main themes.

YouTube trailers:

Consumers should check the site zombieweek.com for ways to prevent (or manage) their PCs’ being attacked by malicious code and being herded unaware into a zombie botnet.

For this reason Zombie Week is being run in association with “National Consumer Fraud Week” undertaken by the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce.

Other major supporters of National Zombie Awareness Week are AusCERT, Cleartext, McAfee, Manaccom, Microsoft, Sophos, Staysmartonline.gov.au, Symantec, Threatmetrix.

About the IIA
The Internet Industry Association (www.iia.net.au) provides policy input to government and advocacy on a range of business and regulatory issues,
to promote laws and initiatives that enhance access, equity, reliability and growth of the Net within Australia.

About ThreatMetrix
IIA member, ThreatMetrix (threatmetrix.com) tracks 12 million live compromised computers at any given time through it ThreatMetrix Intelligence Network. This tracks evidence from a global set of submission sources and sensors including spam traps, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, honey pots, command and control channel interception and darknet sensors. It provides fraud protection solutions to on-line merchants, financial institutions and other eCommerce websites.

Last Updated on Monday, 02 March 2009 10:48

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