This article was pubished on 8-8-2005. Thinking this article might be usefull. I go to the source SpamButcher which sells yet another anti-spam application for only $29.95. Which I am sure it is as good as any though I did not test it. Since SpamBayes is my personal choice as it is a plug-in to the outlook client and is free. I was still interested in the article none the less it might prove useful.

The article starts with this quote. "This document is intended to help people with relatively little networking experience identify if they have a spam zombie problem and provide some basic strategies for dealing with them."  Let's cut to the chase, and find how we can get rid of the bad guys.

So, what should you do?

1. Disconnect the system from the network - do this now!
2. Backup any important data (just get your data- try to avoid copying any installers or executables that could've been the source of the zombie or exploit)
3. Format all drives

This may seem a bit extreme, but is generally a good idea. The best practice in any situation you've had a security compromise that you can't account for 100% is to "level" the computer in question."

We can make it much simplier than a five page article. The statement was that there are millions of hacked and zombied sytems. Everyone who has an infected computer format and start from scratch. Also don't worry about a backup just reinstall everything from scratch. This way you can be certain you are not inserting mal-ware. Also make sure you do the same for all the infected machines in your LAN. Inject dry humor here.

I personally view having to format your disks as a a bit of a pain. So can we look at the menu again, perhaps another option?