The Australian Communications and Media Authority has developed and will host a program that finds ‘zombie’ computers on the Australian internet.

The trial program, called the Australian Internet Security Initiative, identifies infected computers with Australian internet addresses, with five internet service providers (ISPs).

Zombies are computers that have been infected by a computer virus or a similar intrusion, including hacking. Once infected, zombies can be used to commit online crimes remotely from anywhere in the world without the computer owner knowing. Online crimes include sending spam or hosting offensive material. Owners of the computers may also find themselves paying for bandwidth they did not know they were using.