Consequences of Infection

     Individuals and organizations are responsible for the activities originating from their computers. Although civil liability or criminal prosecution may be avoided if the activity can be linked to a system compromise, these consequences should be a concern to all computer users. According to Delio (2004), dozens of respondents to a news story claimed to have lost jobs or their good reputations when traces of pornography were found on their computers after being placed their, by a browser hijacker. The case of Jack provides a more detailed example:

"When I used search engines, sometimes I got a lot of porn pop-ups," Jack said. "Sometimes I was sent to illegal porn sites. When I tried to close one, another five would be opened without my will. They changed my start page, wrote a lot of illegal porn links in favorites. The only way to stop this was turn the (computer's) power off. But when I dialed up to my server again, I started with illegal site, then got the same pop-ups. There were illegal pictures in pop-ups." ... "The police raided my house on Sept. 17, 2002," ... After negotiations through my lawyer I got 180 days in an adult correctional facility . (Delio, 2004).

     Jack’s case, although extreme, demonstrates the possible consequences to unsuspecting victims of Trojans and botnets. One overlooked consequence to the user is the unnecessary replacement of infected computers. "Newer machines feel old, so people end up buying new machines more often than they have to" (Acohido and Swartz, 2008). Perhaps the greatest consequence of botnet infection is the effect on the communications infrastructure. "Says Adam O'Donnell, Cloudmark's director of emerging technology; Telecoms and Internet service providers must absorb the cost of carrying botnet traffic; they can be expected to pass that expense onto companies and consumers, he says" (Acohido and Swartz, 2008).