Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Spammers 'Gearing Up' Botnets For Holiday Rush

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the black-friday-is-gonna-suck dept.

chicksdaddy writes "Spam — there's less of it, but it's much nastier, according to the latest statistics from Google's Postini e-mail security service. According to a post on Google's Enterprise blog, the viral content of spam e-mail (both malicious links and attachments) was up 111% from the same quarter in 2009, even as spam volume overall dropped 24%. The Summertime malware push may be evidence of a push to pump up bot networks in advance of the busy holiday online shopping season, according to Google researchers."

6 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. When will people learn? by Pojut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Spammers wouldn't exist if people didn't fall for their trickery. Not necessarily trying to play "blame the victim", but spam wouldn't exist if people take a few seconds and actually think things through.

    Just saying.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:When will people learn? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh it's no more their fault than it is anyone else's.

      We're always going on about how they need to install a good antivirus and get their system checked out - so when the popup offers them a good antivirus and its "checking their system out" for free - of course they're going to click.

    2. Re:When will people learn? by maxume · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Are you sure it is the recipients that are falling for the trickery?

      I don't have anything to back it up, but I think the people purchasing spamming services are now the ones driving much of it.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    3. Re:When will people learn? by shentino · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Blaming the victim still doesn't let the spammers off the hook though.

      They're still responsible for giving the intertubes stress, hijacking people's computers, etc etc etc.

      And they did have enough electronic firepower to totally obliterate Blue Security.

  2. Re:what holiday ? by Abstrackt · · Score: 3, Funny

    or is this an "American" holiday botnet story ?

    Yes, probably. Slashdot is American so it stands to reason that there would be an American bias.

    American Thanksgiving is next month and it's about as big as Christmas down there. After that, you have Black Friday. A Wal-Mart employee got trampled by frenzied deal-seekers on Black Friday in 2008 so I think it's safe to count it as part of the holiday rush. After that, Christmas is only a hop, skip and a jump away. Soon people will be filling the malls looking for cheap crap to put under their trees. Sears has already started mailing their catalogs so I'm not surprised spammers are already ramping things up too. Nothing says "merry Christmas" like v1agra, I guess.

    --
    They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
  3. All I want... by drcheap · · Score: 4, Funny

    All I want for Christmas
    is my own bot net
    my own bot net
    see my own bot net.