[ISN] Spam Levels Creep Back Up 2 Weeks After McColo Shutdown

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Spam-Levels-Creep-Back-up-Two-Weeks-After-McColo-Shutdown/

By Brian Prince
eWEEK.com
2008-11-25 

Spam levels appear to be rising again after a steep decline.

According to researchers at MessageLabs, now part of Symantec, spam 
volumes have doubled since last week. Spam levels dropped off 
dramatically with the shutdown of Web hosting company McColo on Nov. 11. 
Though the firm briefly gained new life the weekend of Nov. 15, it was 
quickly shut down again, and spam at first remained at relatively low 
levels.

McColo played host to a number of major botnets, including Rustock and 
Asprox. According to Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist at 
MessageLabs, the lag between the initial decline and the subsequent rise 
was due to the time it took for the botnet owners to find a new ISP and 
bandwidth provider.

"The Asprox and Rustock botnets are back with a vengeance after having 
found new command and control," Sergeant said in an e-mail. "Cutwail 
never went away and it seems its owners have used the opportunity to 
increase output. Mega-D is also on the rise again," he said. "Srizbi, 
having once been responsible for 50 percent of all spam, is now 
completely defunct. Without this botnet, spam levels won't return to 
what they had been."

[...]


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