CNet: Hijacked personal computers via zombies likely cause of DDoS traffic against Akamai. The article goes on to say that no further information about the attack has been released because of security reasons. Actually, I hope information is released. I need to know what to look for if I’m called over to help someone tune their machines. The sooner the information is passed along the better.
In another aticle, CNet reports that Spyware companies are reporting that “nearly one of every three computers scanned in April for Trojan horse programs or system monitor spyware was infected.”
The article continues:
“Consumers should be aware of the applications and files residing and running on their machines,” Matt Cobb, Earthlink’s core applications vice president, said in a statement. “While certain types of spyware are malicious, other programs can be used to improve their Internet experience.”
I agree. Right now the information provided by Windows in terms of what the various processes that are running are is too weak. I’d like to see in the TaskManager who the publisher is, what the process is doing (such as talking on ports or running system commands or is it caged in a safe area), a description of what the process is known to be (virus, trojan, commercial app and a description of what it does), what the implications of killing the process are, and how to remove or disable it if desired. This type of information might be useful in the new SP2 Windows Firewall Exceptions page too.
Oh, I installed SP2 Release Candidate 2 yesterday. It all seems to have gone fine. I’ll be watching closely to see how stable it is. I’ve been using SP2 on all my systems for the last couple months and I’ve had very few problems. It’s top notch. The firewall and security improvements are going to improve the virus/trojan problems a lot I hope and the improved Tablet PC TIP is going to have a huge impact on the usability of the Tablet–especially in apps that were never thought of as being Tablet apps.