National Zombie Awareness Week Down Under
No, the dead have not risen from their graves and have not started to wonder the streets of Australian cities in search of fresh brains - that only happens in movies and video games. The Australian authorities are trying to raise interest in a far more down-to-earth matter: zombie computers that are part of large botnets and aid malware spreaders and spammers in their malicious endeavors.
The National Zombie Awareness Week will last until the 8th of March. You can check out further details about this issue on the web page that the Internet Industry Association has set up here. Three short clips have also been put together in an effort to get people to realize the dangers of botnets and zombie computers. You can watch them on YouTube – video 1, video 2, video 3. Each of these clips are inspired by the “Night Of The Living Dead” movie directed by George Romero back in 1968. They are not exactly pieces of art, but they get the job done.
“Anything which raises awareness of this problem, and encourages home users and businesses to better protect their computers with anti-virus software, security patches and firewalls is a good thing from our point of view, so Sophos is proud to be one of the supporters of this initiative. It's important to realize that zombie computers and botnets aren't just a home user problem. As spammers become more aggressive, collaborating with virus writers to create armies of zombie computers, legitimate organizations with hijacked computers are being identified as a source of spam. This not only harms the firm's reputation, but can also cause the company's email to be blocked by others,” commented Senior Technology Consultant and Sophos press contact, Graham Cluley.
Speaking of computer security, it must be said that just recently two big security companies have enhanced their security software solutions: Eset released version 4 of Nod 32 and Eset Smart Security while AVG added identity theft protection to their AVG Internet Security 8.5 product.
The National Zombie Awareness Week will last until the 8th of March. You can check out further details about this issue on the web page that the Internet Industry Association has set up here. Three short clips have also been put together in an effort to get people to realize the dangers of botnets and zombie computers. You can watch them on YouTube – video 1, video 2, video 3. Each of these clips are inspired by the “Night Of The Living Dead” movie directed by George Romero back in 1968. They are not exactly pieces of art, but they get the job done.
“Anything which raises awareness of this problem, and encourages home users and businesses to better protect their computers with anti-virus software, security patches and firewalls is a good thing from our point of view, so Sophos is proud to be one of the supporters of this initiative. It's important to realize that zombie computers and botnets aren't just a home user problem. As spammers become more aggressive, collaborating with virus writers to create armies of zombie computers, legitimate organizations with hijacked computers are being identified as a source of spam. This not only harms the firm's reputation, but can also cause the company's email to be blocked by others,” commented Senior Technology Consultant and Sophos press contact, Graham Cluley.
Speaking of computer security, it must be said that just recently two big security companies have enhanced their security software solutions: Eset released version 4 of Nod 32 and Eset Smart Security while AVG added identity theft protection to their AVG Internet Security 8.5 product.
