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Computer Hijackings Increase by 50% in 2008

by Tim Stevens on May 6, 2009 at 10:09 AM

Computer Hijackings Increase by 50 Percent in 2008

There are plenty of malicious programs that can do plenty of nasty things to plenty of computers, but, far and away, the most common type of attack results in what is known as a zombie. A zombie is a hijacked computer that can be remote-controlled by the attacker and made to do his or her bidding. According to a recent study by security firm McAffee, there were 50-percent more zombie computers on the Internet in 2008 than there were the year previous.

The report goes on to state that a frightening 18-percent of all computers in the U.S. are infected, meaning that, almost certainly, one of the computers you use (or one of the computers your friends use) is infected. Largely responsible are malicious programs like Conficker that trick users into installing or running them and then run in the background, responding to signals sent out by zombie ringleaders. Some can exploit flaws in an application's security, injecting themselves into your computer without your ever having prompted them.

To avoid being a sad statistic, always keep your computer up to date, and always, always, run a virus scanner. [From: BBC News]

Tags: bot, botnet, mcaffee, security, top, virus, virus scanner, VirusScanner, worm, zombie

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