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Spam Success Depends on Ownership of Botnets

A study conducted by the computer science departments of the University of California on its Berkeley and San Diego campuses demonstrated that the number people who actually made a purchase after a spam pitch were only a fraction of a percent.

The researchers broke into the Storm botnet, a network of compromised systems used to send spam. The findings of the researchers are based on estimated figures made after a short use of Strom botnet to transfer measureable but harmless spam and phishing messages.

It is known that during the study period, researchers forwarded three different types of messages, out of which two were similar to spam mails sent by the botnet. The third message included unreal pharmaceutical spam using the same trick by which the botnet makes illegitimate money.

The researchers claimed that an extensive spam distribution through Storm botnet generated about $3.5 Million every year.

Moreover, their research claimed 569 conversions on close to 500 Million spam messages. In addition, the researchers allegedly forwarded 347,590,389 pharmaceutical based spam mails, which produced 10,522 website visits and 28 sales with the conversion rate of 0.0000081%.

Such a small rate of returns shows that for making huge amount of money, spammers have to do business in bulk. It also means that spammers sending fake pharmaceutical mails have to own the botnet to earn money.

Other details of the latest study showed that the total daily revenue earned by Storm's pharmacy campaign is closer to $7,000 (or $9,500 in periods of campaign activity).

The report stated spam will go on circulating pharmacy spam indicating that it is indeed lucrative, as reported by INTERNETNEWS on July 15, 2009.

One clarification is that Storm's masters are vertically integrated and the suppliers of Storm's pharmacy spam mails are operators of the Storm itself (in other words, that Storm does not deliver these spams for a [third-party] in exchange for a fee), said the study.

Professional spamming continues to rise at a record level in spite the best efforts of security researchers, said security experts. Law enforcement groups and web stakeholders need to take strong steps to stop this seemingly lucrative business.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

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