Rustock Closure Makes Little Impact on Spam Volumes

Kaspersky Lab, which released its Q1 2011 spam report, states that spam levels declined 2% to 3% prior to commencing to their earlier volumes following the Rustock network of-bots' takedown on March 16, 2011.

Also, it's reported that the effect on worldwide e-mail junk wasn't very great when Rustock was shutdown compared to when Bredolab and Cutwail/Pushdo botnets were closed during 2010.

Elaborates Head of Content Analysis & Research Darya Gudkova at Kaspersky Lab, the above may be because of Spamit an enormous pharmaceutical associate scheme's takedown as well as of Rustock that dispatched pharma spam, but possibly stopped distributing bulk e-mails towards 2010 end. Moreover, Rustock may have been utilized for various reasons. It's further probable that the spammers of their own thought it better to slow down operations for sometime due to agencies of law enforcement showing their concerns about botnets between July and December 2010, Gudkova explains. Itp.net published this on May 13, 2011.

Thus owing to the above, spam volumes spotted in total e-mail between January and March 2011 was slightly less than 80%, accounting for a partial 1.4% rise over the earlier quarter (Q4 2010). However, this rise was yet 6.5% below the percentage of Q1 2010.

Moreover, according to the report, during Q1 2011, spam generated in the Latin American and Asian countries contributed a share of over 3.85% and 2.93% respectively in the total global spam. Contrarily, spam levels generated in Western and Eastern Europe dropped 2.36% and 5.64% respectively. Also among the countries distributing spam most vigorously, Africa was a new entrant. The amount of unwanted e-mails originating from African nations contributed a 3.66% share in global spam, being more than that of Canada and USA.

Interestingly, the above statistics correspond with the predictions of Kaspersky Lab that botnets are likely to begin moving to countries which don't have any anti-spam law or the laws are not very effective. Nevertheless, spammers' operations indicate that bot-networks will undergo further development in future within countries where there is greater protection, implying that their proliferation will be more or less equal worldwide, similar to the present situation.

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

» SPAMfighter News - 5/23/2011