Spam volumes are still increasing despite the death of McColo
You may have read our article on how a security firm attempted to stop the Srizbi Botnet after the shutdown of McColo in November. As you may know, McColo was found to be a hosting company for many of the world's major spam botnets, about 50% of them worldwide. After the shutdown it seems the volume of spam is now increasing again.
After the initial shutdown of McColo it may have been a decrease of spam actions over the internet but now after about a month it is increasing once again. Man security researchers believe it was only a matter of time before the spam volume would start increasing again even with the demise of McColo. The holidays are here and you better believe that the creators of spam and spam botnets are going to use this time to capitalize on thousands of computer users over the internet.
It is no doubt that the shutdown of McColo crippled the botnet creators where they are not able to send the same commands to their infected hosts. To combat this they issued a new set of commands where the existence of McColo did not matter. Basically, the hackers were able to regain control of their botnets without the presence of McColo. Mega-D was a botnet that was also shutdown during the demise of McColo but has since reemerged. Experts believe the rise of Mega-D botnet is the reason for the spam increase regardless of the disappearance of McColo. It was also discovered that Mega-D was upgraded so that it may operate just like currently existing botnets.
Chart showing the rise of Mega-D botnet
[source: blogs.zdnet.com]
The Srizbi Botnet still remains to be a main player in the rise of spam levels in the past weeks. This goes to show that these botnet creators are very difficult to completely shut down. We must face the fact that spam will still be something that we all have to combat. We must all use our common judgment and common since when it comes to spam messages by staying in-the-know of the latest threats.
How many spam messages do you get on a daily bases? Have you seen an increase of the spam messages that you get as we approach the holiday season?