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Rustock Dominates Botnets Pushing Spam

According to one fresh study that Symantec conducted and whose results were published in the company's yearly MessageLabs Intelligence 2010 Security Report, Rustock botnet, a prime worldwide channel for spam, continues to be the top botnet for sending junk e-mails. PCWorld reported this on December 12, 2010.

Everyday Rustock pushes some 44bn spam mails. To maintain the continuous flow of spam, prominent botnet operators like those of Rustock, Grum and Cutwail keep on innovating, according to the reports that InformationWeek published on December 8, 2010.

Further as per the reports, the effect of botnet activity vis-à-vis spam volumes has been measured as also the level of resilience of botnets despite their takedowns. Additionally, the reports observed that spam levels declined following the shutdown of Spamit the spam affiliate during early October 2010.

Moreover, it's been observed that botnet controllers have tried their hands on various command-and-control (C&C) systems, shifting from conventional IRC structures, because firewalls can easily block them, to web-based C&S structures. A few have also tried Twitter, the social-networking website to work like a C&C medium in 2010.

During 2010, huge rises in spam were mainly because of explosion in variants of polymorphic malicious programs produced with kits which help to easily create the codes' new versions. The Himalayan published this on December 12, 2010.

Stated senior analyst Paul Wood of MessageLabs Intelligence at Symantec Hosted Services, spammers utilized topics associated with current events along with captivating questions towards luring victims. PCWorld published this.

Wood further said that as botnet operations during earlier years were resilient and successful, in the current year (2010), cyber-criminals had tried techniques for maintaining spam runs fresh and active.

He added that the spammers employed various tactics to evade anti-spam software as well as entice potential victims via exploiting newsworthy happenings such as the FIFA World Cup to exploiting people's wide acceptance of social-networking sites and URL condensing facilities.

Typically, spammers targeted 200-300 organizations every month; however, the sectors targeted varied, while senior employees were the most common attack points although frequently via an assistant's or general mailbox, Wood stated. InformationWeek reported this.

Related article: Rustock Become The World’s Largest Spam Botnet

» SPAMfighter News - 12/22/2010

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