ZombieMeter keeps track of hacked PCs
by Nikola Strahija on May 29th, 2005 Internet security company CipherTrust on Thursday breathed life into its ZombieMeter, a new system that tracks traffic from hacked, or zombie PCs, around the world.
So far this month CipherTrust has found an average of 172,009 new zombies each day. About 26 percent of those were found in the European Union, 20 percent in the United States and 15 percent in China, the company said. The locations of the zombies changes on a daily basis.
Zombie PCs have become a serious problem that requires more industry action, the Federal Trade Commission said earlier this week. The organization has launched "Operation Spam Zombie" and plans to ask Internet service providers to quarantine zombies and help users clean the PCs.
CipherTrust identifies threats such as zombie activity, virus patterns and phishing attacks using data from its IronMail appliance, which is installed at customer sites, Paul Judge, CipherTrust chief technology officer, said in the statement.