Chris in The New Yorker

THE ZOMBIE HUNTERS: On the trail of cyberextortionists by EVAN RATLIFF

Chris thinks it's a big coup that he "beat" me into The New Yorker. I haven't the heart to tell the poor guy my ambitions lie elsewhere. Bully for you, dear!

"In the most common scenario, the bots surreptitiously connect hundreds, or thousands, of zombies to a channel in a chat room. The process is called “herding,” and a herd of zombies is called a botnet. The herder then issues orders to the zombies, telling them to send unsolicited e-mail, steal personal information, or launch attacks. Herders also trade, rent, and sell their zombies. “The botnet is the little engine that makes the evil of the Internet work,” Chris Morrow, a senior network-security engineer at M.C.I., said. “It makes spam work. It makes identity fraud work. It makes extortion, in this case, work."

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p.s. Speaking of zombies, in a couple hours I'll be taking Gideon over to his Grandma's so he can try on his Halloween costume.

Werewolf, baby.

Cause he's a biter.