GUEST,Student of the black horse,
What you say is true of viruses, but not the IRC Bots/Zombies that this story is about. Any Windoze PC not behind a firewall seems vulnerable. Dial-up conneections are not as vulnerable because people usually dial-up only when they want to do internet things & because they are so slow the hackers don't need to bother. Machines on Internet Cable usually log-on to the internet when started up & provide the hackers lots of band-width. If you have no firewall, the hackers can get access to your machine without you're knowing & without you having downloaded anything special.