Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet [Excerpt, Part 4]

Spammers deploy malware to hijack unwary machines and use them as purveyors of junk messaging. Read this last installment about how the history of the Internet coincides with the history of spam

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A software worm called Storm?intricately crafted malware?became an engine for distributing spam and hijacking unwary computers to further spread the contagion. It also became a laboratory specimen for both security specialists and hackers who wished to study the workings of this scheme for hijacking and subjugating multitudes of unsuspecting machines to the worm-writer?s purposes. In yet another incarnation, spam floods Estonia?s Internet as digital effluvia becomes an implement of cyber warfare.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Reprinted from Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet, by Finn Brunton. Copyright ? 2013, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Used with permission of the publisher, the MIT Press.

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=spam-shadow-history-of-internet-excerpt-part-four

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