Re: zombie calculator, messaging without SMTP using identity brokers (Re: response to "proof of work proves not to work"?)

On 7/18/06, Eric S. Johansson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> [1] do we have anyone in the audience who works for an ISP or a hosting
> facility?  It would be interesting to build an anti-spam e-mail service
> where people become users of stamps and participate in the good zombie
> culture.  We also need someone to generate the zombie engine and user
> interface for authentication of requesters for stamps.


There's one small piece I've been confused about for a while now, and that's
the definition of 'zombie' in this context. My understanding is that a
zombie is an internet-connected PC which is infected with a trojan which
allows a malicious 3rd party to access its resources. In the case of
Hashcash the 3rd party would be a spammer who wants to use the zombie PC to
generate stamps. Am I correct so far?

Or is the zombie PC used solely to send spam, without calculating the
stamps? Or both?

So in the case of a 'good zombie culture' the PCs are running a legitimate
background process which generates stamps both for the user and others in
their trusted group. Almost like the SETI approach to distributed computing.
Do I have that right?