Where Have All the Spambots Gone?
Summary: Global spam volume fell sharply over the year to mid-2011, with Symantec reporting a drop from over 225 billion messages per day at the July 2010 peak to between 25 and 50 billion, and Cisco tracking a decline from 300 billion in June 2010 to 40 billion in June 2011. The decline coincided with takedowns and arrests including the FBI-led action against Coreflood, Microsoft's attack on Rustock (once responsible for 40 percent of junk email), the December 2010 arrest of a Russian accused of running Mega-D, and the October 2010 arrest of the alleged Bredolab creator in the Netherlands. Kaspersky Lab reported that a new version of the TDSS malware, TDL-4, had already infected 4.5 million PCs, using a custom encryption scheme and a peer-to-peer control network with multiple failsafe mechanisms.
What's compelling: TDL-4's 4.5 million infected machines and its ability to remove competing malware like ZeuS show botmasters adapting to takedowns faster than defenders can dismantle them, and FireEye's Alex Lanstein notes that lasting takedowns only come from putting criminals in silver bracelets.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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