Comcast tests alerts on 'botnet' invasions -- chicagotribune.com

PHILADELPHIA - -- Comcast Corp. wants to enlist its customers in a fight against a huge problem for Internet providers -- the armies of infected personal computers, known as "botnets," that suck up bandwidth by sending spam and facilitating cybercrime.

The country's largest provider of high-speed Internet to homes started testing a service this month in Denver in which Comcast sends customers a pop-up message in their Web browsers if their computers seem to have been co-opted by a botnet. One botnet can involve tens of thousands of zombie computers...