Many Internet Service Providers are cracking down on spam, Denial of Service, and Phishing attempts across their network. This is an effort to protect customers on the network, and to protect business interests reliant on the network for secure communications. Companies have implemented safeguards and other new programs to try and reduce the amount of traffic to known malicious IP addresses.

Comcast recently launched their Constant Guard notification program which monitors network traffic for activity to known malicious IP addresses. After 5 hits, an automated email or voice mail is sent to the customer indicating: The Constant Guard Service has identified one or more of your computers may be infected with a Bot (Virus). Some customers may think the Constant Guard notification is a scam, but in fact, this is a global attempt to help customers protect their secure information, and a requirement as per most network provider’s customer terms of use service agreement. In other words, ISPs actually have the right to turn-off network connectivity to devices known to be particpiating in malicious activity, whether the end-user is aware of this activity or not.

Road Runner, Charter, Comcast, and others have and often will disable Port 25 traffic for high levels of malicious activity. Port 25 is typically used for SMTP email, so depending on how a user checks their email or whether they use SSL or webmail, will decide the impact of such service changes.

Understaning A Bot:
Under these circumstances, a Bot is more the type of activity a virus is participating in rather than the actual type of virus itself, since multiple malicious entries will perform bot-like behaviour.  A Constant Guard type notification or port 25 block can be one of many issues such as:

• Phishing.  Gathering information about your computer preferences, browsing, and applications and sending to a central server.
• Key-Loggers.  Attempts to gather personal and important information by monitoring key-strokes, extracting information such as login IDs, password, SSN, Credit card #s, etc and sending to a central server.
• Rogue Security or Rogue AV.  Viruses providing fake scans and alerts to get you to purchase fraudulent system tool applications
• Backdoor Attacks (outbound)
• Malformed Traffic (outbound)
• Database Attacks (outbound)
• Denial Of Service Attacks (DOS, and DDOS).  Using your computer to actively send DOS attacks to central servers, businesses, networks or government agencies
• Spam and Propogation (outbound)