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Zombies Mean Business

Carrier Hotels Staff Posted Feb 13, 2004

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The virus-laden e-mails have slowed, but the legacy of MyDoom lives on in an army of 50,000 or more compromised computers that remain connected to the Internet. Many of these machines belong to home users on cable modem or DSL connections who either don't know or don't care that their machine is infected. The widely-publicized backdoor installed by MyDoom has made this army of "zombies" a playground for hackers and spammers, who are deploying all manner of malware in attempts to harness these machines for their own ends.

Why should data service center providers care? These zombies represent a huge and probably permanent platform for Internet crime and mischief that will create problems for you or your customers. Compromised machines being managed by hackers are the driving force behind the huge increase in Spam, creating a distributed network of unwitting mail servers.

As demonstrated in the attacks on the SCO Group web site, the zombie network is also a launchpad for Distributed Denial of Service attacks. The attacks on SCO and Microsoft aren't the real reason to worry. The more worrisome model is the use of threatened DDoS attacks as an extortion tool against Internet gaming sites, several of which have been knocked offline after refusing warnings to pay up or be attacked.

It's only a matter of time before similar tactics are used to target e-commerce providers, retailers or any business for whom downtime means a financial setback. Few are likely to relent to such threats. Their alternative is to find better ways to defend their web sites through additional servers, load balancing or content distribution networks.

Security has been a major selling point for many service providers, driving a number of deals and partnerships between hosting companies and managed service providers. The rising tide of Spam and DDoS attacks underscores the value these services will represent going forward.

The zombies mean business, both in their intent and in the likelihood that customers will take a harder look at security solutions available from data center service providers.