Wired: How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet

Charles C. Mann reporting on pay-per-click advertising fraud:

Probably the most worrisome emerging threat is zombie networks — hordes of linked machines controlled by rogue software. Without their owners’ knowledge, these boxes continuously send spam, transmit worms and viruses, participate in denial-of-service attacks, and execute a host of other antisocial tasks. These zombie networks can be enormous. […] The robot machines create clicks from all around the world at apparently random intervals, making them difficult to identify.

★ Saturday, 31 December 2005