I wrote an article, in June of this year, on FIFA World Cup spammers that turned out to be a popular article (over 4,000 reads) – so, I’ve decided Spam isn’t all bad after all. 🙂
I’m being more than a little facetious, of course. Spam, without a doubt, is one the worst things about the Internet.
MessageLabs Intelligence August 2010, report indicates (surprise, surprise), that there’s been a recent minor reduction in the total amount of spam in circulation. Offsetting this slightly good news though; the same report makes the point that spam, generated by botnets, has increased to 95 percent of all spam – up 11% in just five months.
The Rustock botnet continues to be the main culprit, pumping out 41 percent of all spam in August. This, despite the fact that the Rustock botnet has been reduced in size by roughly half.
Before you think that’s because we’re better at catching botneted machines – it’s not. The fact is, the Rustock botnet is now faster, and more efficient, because it no longer uses TLS encryption.
Selected stats from the report:
This month, there were a significant number of yet-to-be classified botnets responsible for spending 17.6 percent of all spam.
The UK was responsible for 4.5 percent of the world’s spam, more than double the percentage in April, and the UK is now the fourth most frequent source of spam behind the US, India and Brazil.
The US is home to the greatest number of bots, most notably Rustock, Storm and Asprox.
A PDF version of the full report including additional findings on spam and security threats is available here.
About Message Labs Intelligence:
Symantec’s Message Labs Intelligence is a respected source of data and analysis for messaging security issues, trends and statistics. MessageLabs Intelligence provides a range of information on global security threats based on live data feeds from our control towers around the world scanning billions of messages each week.
About Symantec:
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available here.
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