HerbalKing’s Shut Down Not Affecting Spam Flood

As the police ended the game of the infamous spam network HerbalKing in the second week of October 2008, security agencies and the anti-spam research organizations estimated that there will be an overall decline in the volume of spam. However, nothing such happened as still large volume of spam is being sent worldwide.

It is worth noting that HerbalKing was responsible for about one-third of the global spam.

According to the report of IronPort, a division of security firm Cisco, about 183.5 Billion spam e-mails were sent on October 13, 2008, the first day of imposing restriction on HerbalKing. On the other hand, October 19, 2008 recorded a slightly less (142.4 Billion) spam e-mails as it Sunday. The overall spam levels between October 13, 2008 and October 19, 2008 saw a decrease from 90.9% to 89.7% of total spam.

Nilesh Bhandari, Product Manager of IronPort, stated that a substitute is always prepared to replace an unlawful organization. He further told that the increasingly complicated attacks of harmful spam and phishing e-mails are taking the spam volume to greater heights, as reported by The New York Times on October 20, 2008.

Also, Dimitry Samosseiko, Head of Spam Operations for Sophos, revealed that no significant decline in spam level was observed by the company during the second week of October 2008. He also revealed that the associate spammers, who used to send spam e-mails on behalf of HerbalKing, might have turned out and found some other criminals to work for.

According to security experts, closure of one such gang is not sufficient to make any significant statistical difference in the volumes of spam as there are several others to take its position. Moreover, they advised that the only way to bring a reduction in their levels is that the computer users worldwide should ensure that their PCs are free of malware. The malware gives the ultimate control of the PC to the spammer and they use them as part of a botnet.

Moreover, the Internet users have been suggested to install an up-to-date antivirus, scan and make their computers free of any unwanted and harmful software.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/24/2008