Postini: Spam up again following McColo takedown
It has taken spammers only four months to get their botnets back up after hosting company McColo Corp. was shut down, according to statistics due to be released on Tuesday from Google's Postini e-mail security provider.
Spam volumes dropped as much as 70 percent or 80 percent overnight when San Jose, Calif.-based McColo was shut down on November 11, 2008. McColo was hosting command and control servers that were being used to send instructions--like send spam or Trojans--to bot software planted on PCs, mostly in the U.S.
By the second half of March, seven-day average spam volume was at the same volume as prior to the McColo shut down, and overall spam volume during the first quarter was up an average of 1.2 percent per day--the strongest since early 2008, Postini said. By comparison, spam grew about 1 percent per day in the first quarter of last year, which was a record high at the time.
"Spammers have essentially spent this time rebuilding their botnets," Adam Swidler, Postini product marketing manager, said in an interview on Monday.
However, the spammers appear to be using new techniques that are more resilient to ISP shutdowns, such as using peer-to-peer technology to send instructions between computers rather than having one command-and-control computer communicate with botnets, he said.
Also new is the use of location-based spam, such as e-mails touting fake news customized to the geographical location of the recipient. Other popular spam topics during the quarter continued to be related to the economy, financial markets, and layoffs, Postini said.
More information is in the Official Google Enterprise Blog.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
Seaspray, I would rather seem them prosecuted and jailed.
- by kojacked March 31, 2009 12:12 PM PDT
- Since you are probably never going to catch them it would be better to sabotage their infrastruture. Fight fire with fire. Also they should go after the companies they are spamming for. Fine them heavily for using such "services".
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- by Dalkorian March 31, 2009 4:34 PM PDT
- by kojacked March 31, 2009 12:12 PM PDT
- Like this
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(5 Comments)Also they should go after the companies they are spamming for. Fine them heavily for using such "services".
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Best idea I've heard in a while on this topic. We can identify "spam" pretty easily and it invariably leads somewhere (someone is trying to make money). Fine them ridiculous amounts, like a million bucks per spam message. That would send a message, trust me they would stop paying for it in an instant if they thought they could be financially trashed like that for it! Once the companies stop paying, the spam will virtually stop. It only continues because it's making money for the scumbags.