Spam Regaining Lost Volume After McColo Shutdown

MessageLabs issued a report in the end week of January 2009 which states that the volume of spam has nearly returned to volume prior to the McColo shutdown in November 2008. The renewed volume up 5 points from December 2008 and is heading towards the 75% mark.

According to the report, among the ten most vibrant spam-spewing botnets, Mega-D (Ozdoc) made the largest contribution in January 2009, pushing out over 26 Million e-mails per minute. However, Cutwail (Pandex) continues to be the biggest botnet, with over 1 Million IPs during the month. Some very large spam-spewing botnets among the top 10 have newly appeared on the Web, including Waledac, Donbot and Xarvester.

Although the Waledac worm was spreading dramatically in January 2009, it distributed relatively small amount of spam. As of now, the controllers of this botnet are clearly concentrating on developing and increasing its botnets instead of engaging it in fresh spam. The botnet remains one for watching as the year 2009 rolls on, says MessageLabs.

As per the report, other notable statistics comprise 11.5% of the entire Web-borne malicious programs were intercepted for the first time in January 2009. This development led to a 6% hike in new findings in contrast to those made during December 2008. January 2009 also saw 11.8% of e-mail-borne malware that carried links leading to malevolent websites, a rise of 9.1% from December 2008.

Moreover, in January 2009, there was a 0.14% fall in phishing attacks against December 2008, as 0.25% of all e-mails were related to phishing. Furthermore, in terms of threats via e-mail like trojans and viruses, the rate of fraudulent phishing messages declined to 64.9%, down 11.2% of all malware that spread via e-mail and were blocked in January 2009.

The report also said that the Srizbi botnet that pushed 50% of all spam during 2008 is now dispersing e-mails not even half its capacity since the McColo shutdown. Nevertheless, the newer botnets would continue to expand due to spammers' advanced techniques to reconnect with their compromised zombies even when their service host shutdown.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 2/15/2009