Zombie (computing)

Zombies can be used to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, a term which refers to the orchestrated flooding of target websites by large numbers of computers at once.

Committed by "pulsing" zombies, distributed degradation-of-service is the moderated and periodical flooding of websites intended to slow down rather than crash a victim site.

The effectiveness of this tactic springs from the fact that intense flooding can be quickly detected and remedied, but pulsing zombie attacks and the resulting slow-down in website access can go unnoticed for months and even years.

[5] The computing facilitated by the Internet of Things (IoT) has been productive for modern-day usage, yet it has played a significant role in the increase in web attacks.

Later that month, researcher Charlie Miller revealed a proof of concept text message worm for the iPhone at Black Hat Briefings.

But in an August 2009 interview with The New York Times, cyber security consultant Michael Gregg summarized the issue this way: "We are about at the point with [smart]phones that we were with desktops in the '80s.