Let's Hear It for the Bot-Zombies

The FBI's Operation Bot Roast is intended to stops bots or zombies using your computer. Zombies, my preferred term, are more subtle and elusive than viruses. Indeed, you may never know of a zombie infestation. Your computer will be quietly used for some task of which you have no knowledge. The most interesting of these tasks - and, I am told, the one that most alarms the security services - is not mentioned in the BBC story. Zombies, it seems, can borrow money from any account it can access from your computer. The key word here is 'borrow'; the money is taken and then returned. You will never notice this has happened. If this is done on a large enough scale. the zombie masters will, presumably, have billions of short term cash to play the money markets. The technology is thus improving the efficiency of the world economy by putting idle funds to work. Zombies are also watching porn, taking out Second Life and MySpace accounts and starting blogs. I say: go, zombies.