Chris Linfoot | Spam is back

Thursday, 27. November 2008

Spam is back

I'm sure that you remember the McColo shutdown, which led directly to a significant drop in worldwide spam volumes.

At the time I noted a drop in attempts to deliver spam here, though it was a much smaller drop than others had suggested it might be. In fact spam delivery attempts here did continue to drop fairly sharply after I wrote that earlier piece and bottomed out at perhaps half of the previous level.

But, according to the Beeb, spam is on its way back.

Two weeks after the shutdown of web hosting firm McColo, which saw a two-thirds drop in spam worldwide, spam numbers are creeping up again.

Industry experts disagree on the degree to which spam has returned, but most say that prior levels will soon be reached.

We're certainly seeing a small rise here though spam has not yet returned to pre-McColo levels. It does seem inevitable that the old status quo will be restored though, because the McColo shutdown did not address the problem at source.

What do I mean?

The command and control infrastructure of a number of botnets was taken down, but not the botnets themselves. It is surely only a matter of time before a new C&C infrastructure capable of resuming control of those botnets will be deployed by the bad guys.

Category: Spam miscellany
Technorati: McColo Spam

Comments :

1. Danny Wells27/11/2008 15:19:38

so spam is coming back huh? sounds like bad news for my dad, Colin Wells, the most spammed man in the UK lol, he used to get 44000 spam everyday, i cant begin to image how many he will be getting now!

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