Spam Down, but Web Attacks and Botnets Up: MAAWG

According to MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group), there is a gradual decline in malicious or spam mails, while more effective Web-based attacks and treacherous botnets are increasingly attracting the interest of cyber-criminals such as malware authors and spammers.

Evidently, "bots" that form botnets are described as PCs infected with malware proliferated through virus-laden instant messages, e-mails or websites when it is installed on the systems without the users' concern.

In general, people with contaminated computers do not know that abusive e-mails are being sent from their machines, while among the other threats, malware might steal confidential personal information from the users to commit identity theft.

Recently, vendors and ISPs of MAAWG reported on October 26, 2009 that although malicious e-mails dropped slightly, yet it was constant at about 90% of the total e-mail traffic. During Q4-2008, spam levels spiked remarkably, as ISPs reported of observing 94.2% of the total e-mail traffic flowing through their systems as spam or malware-laden, or originating from familiar exploitative sources.

Nonetheless, as the rate of spam mails is so high, MAAWG says ISPs are burdened with inflated costs of blocking them: the service providers employ sophisticated techniques to stop spam largely at the entry point.

Moreover, according to security researchers, although spam continues to increase considerably, yet they have demonstrated their ability to restrain it somewhat. States Chairman Michael O'Reirdan for MAAWG that spam mails will continue to be substantial, reported Dark Reading on October 27, 2009.

Other members of MAAWG like Cisco observe that the threat of malware proliferation through electronic mails is now less severe in developed nations. For e.g., spam originating from G-20 countries in 2009 stood 20-40% less than that in 2008.

Further, to address the immediate problems relating to botnet detection and elimination as well as to stop other Internet abuses, MAAWG has recently proposed a number of novel projects.

Said O'Reirdan, it was extremely important to mitigate botnet for safeguarding end-users from exploitation as well as towards ensuring a trustworthy online environment, for which MAAWG was taking aggressive measures. MAAWG published this on October 28, 2009.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 11/9/2009