There has been a 23 per cent increase in the total number of zombies detected this week due to the release of a modification of the Mocbot worm, according to CipherTrust Research Labs.

An average of 265,000 zombies have been identified per day since the release of the Mocbot worm, which is exploiting the MS060-040 Windows vulnerability announced on 8th August.

Ed Rowley, technical consultant at CipherTrust said: 'Mail volumes have
once again reached a high this week, with spam making up 81 per cent of
the traffic. Much of this increase can be attributed to the spam
originating from the new zombies unleashed by the Mocbot worm.'

The Mocbot worm infects machines through flaws in Windows and programmes
in the Microsoft Office suite. Any computer compromised by the worm will
become part of a large network set up to send out junk mail.

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Further Reading:

Worm mutation breeds zombies

US remains top of the spam list