Malicious Spam Jumps To 3B Messages Per Day

Trailrunner7 writes "Last year saw a monstrous increase in the volume of malicious spam, according to a new report (PDF). In the second half of 2009, the number of spam messages sent per day skyrocketed from 600 million to three billion, according to new research. For some time now, spam has been accounting for 90 or more percent of all email messages. But the volume of spam had been relatively steady in the last couple of years. Now, the emergence of several large-scale botnets, including Zeus and Koobface, has led to an enormous spike in the volume of spam."

Comments

Oh really?

[B5_geek]

And I still see less then 1 per month in my Inbox.
_THIS_ is the price I am willing to pay to allow Google to filter my email.

Re:Oh really?

[Jugalator]

And I still see less then 1 per month in my Inbox.
_THIS_ is the price I am willing to pay to allow Google to filter my email.

Hear, hear. I was very surprised when I recently checked my spam volume. That is, in my Gmail *spam* box, not inbox. The inbox is usually clear of it, but the surprising part was that I had around a third to a fourth of my former spam volume a few years ago! I used to have to have 1.5 pages of spam per day before, now you have around 0.5 pages of daily spam in the spambox.

I'm not sure what Google did if this article is true... Maybe they are so sure of that it's spam, that it doesn't even end up in the spam box? Because, as for my mail address, when it ends up in a register, I don't see why spammers would later remove it. It obviously receives the spam since the mail server doesn't return an error...

Or maybe it's what I heard being rumored once - that certain spam networks avoid Gmail to save costs, because it's so inefficient to spam those mail boxes.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[XanC]

I'd rather have my ISP not be in the business of picking through my traffic and deciding what's "good" and what's "evil". Who I talk to over my connection is my business.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[Jeng]

Although I think very low of the morality of those who do this for a living, but at times you really have to respect their skills.

This isn't just like running an email service for a fortune 500 company, its more like running a black ops email service for a fortune 500 company.

Every aspect of the operation is ran over with a fine tooth comb for discretion. Not too many from each node, sending out the spam messages at a low rate, redundancy, resource management, payroll. This cannot be easy.

Too bad these people are going with a life of crime, with their potential I would think they could do very well in legitimate work.

Re:charge for email

[harp2812]

Let me know when you find a reliable way to...
a) Charge for email
b) Prevent unpaid mail from being sent
c) Prevent botnets from sending 30 free messages then stopping for the day
d) Prevent botnets from sending a ton of paid messages using financial info on the host computer
e) Prevent spammers from setting up a mail server that charges for messages, repeating d) and then collecting all the money.

etc, ad nauseum.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[HTH NE1]

Why can't ISP's detect large numbers of messages suddenly going to a vast array of e-mail address and shut it down?

1. The messages aren't identical
2. The messages don't originate from just one machine but from botnet zombies scattered all over the net with distributed command and control with multiple contingencies for regaining control
3. The messages don't end up at just one mail host
4. By the time it's detected the damage is already done
5. Anyone who does detect it isn't in a position to stop it from happening again

Basically what you're suggesting boils down to throttling the entire Internet so that it can't handle the capacity of spamming, which will make it useless for any e-mail delivery. You might as well just kill e-mail.

Where's your beloved filter now?

[damn_registrars]

Yeah, we can see how much of a wonderful difference all those filtering programs that are on the market today are doing for the worldwide spamming problem. That is, no difference.

If you want to do something about the spamming problem, start looking beyond your own nose. Stop adjusting your filtering rules constantly. Pay attention to the cause of the problem - spam is an economic problem. Until something is done about the profit-motive (and the insane margins of profit) behind spam, the problem will only continue to grow.

Re:Thanks Largely To The Prevalance Of

[icebike]

Why is this modded troll?

Seriously people, bot nets are virtually 100% windows machines, not because windows is popular, simply because windows is so EASY to subvert.

Nothing has improved or changed in this fact since spam started to be a serious problem.

Seems like incentive to rethink e-mail

[LordArgon]

Given the estimation that 90% of e-mail was spam *before* a five-fold daily increase, why aren't more people/companies clamoring for a complete e-mail re-architecture? Improved filtering and new spam laws are just symptomatic fixes - the entire way we do e-mail needs to change.

The resources wasted and stolen by spam are staggering. Eventually the economic and political incentive to adopt better e-mail protocols has to kick in; I'm just surprised it hasn't yet.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[wizardforce]

I'm willing to live with that minor invasion of privacy (cutting off obvious bots) in exchange for lower prices.

That's naive. Any cost savings get funneled right into the profit machine long before you see any of it.