Friday, March 4, 2011

Spam goes away and then returns

Less than fifty percent between July and December according to figures from security firm Barracuda Computer Labs, the volume of unsolicited email, or spam, has plunged in 2010. A trend corroborated by measurements of other companies, including Symantec and Kaspersky, the latter noting that the proportion of spam in all email messages exchanged continued to decrease in January, before returning to rise sharply in February .

Spammers they would abandon the party? Not really. The volume of spam posted on the Internet depends primarily on the results of the battle between police and the managers of botnets, networks of computers infected by viruses that give third control certain features, including sending e-mail.

The vast majority of spam circulating on the network is distributed by botnets: controlling hundreds of thousands of PCs, their directors have both a tool for collecting email addresses and a tool mass mailing. CLOSURE OF MULTIPLE NETWORKS However, 2010 was marked by the closure of several large botnets.

In late October, an investigation by the Dutch police has led to the closure of Bredolab network, which controlled an estimated investigators, 30 million computers in Tech News Buzz, mainly used to send spam for pharmaceuticals. "The closure of the control centers Bredolab had a direct impact on the amount of spam in email traffic.

Just after the closing, the share of spam emails worldwide has decreased by 8 to 9% before increasing again, "said Kaspersky. Despite the closure of Bredolab, spam pharmaceutical experienced significant growth in 2010. According to figures Barracuda Labs, the share of unsolicited emails that advertise online pharmacies grew by 25% of the total to more than 50%.

A trend expected to continue early 2011 after a brief lull during the last fortnight of December, Rustock, a major spam botnet dedicated to the pharmaceutical, resumed its activities in January. The volume of unsolicited emails, however, remains lower in January and February, its levels of last year, according to figures more consistent security companies.

VERTICAL INTEGRATION AND DIVERSIFICATION Over the years, spammers have increasingly tended to practice vertical integration. Initially, some broadcasters were content to send emails to others. Now, almost all professional spammers also have the network of websites to which they are attempting to divert Internet users.

This does not prevent fraudsters to diversify their activities, exploiting certain loopholes in how search engines calculate referencing websites. By creating ephemeral sites, posing as sources of information on topical issues (floods in Australia, American reality TV ...) diffusing viruses and scams are trying to capture some of the hundreds of thousands Research carried out.

A booming business since June 2010, notes Barracuda Labs, which also extends to Twitter, with a marked increase in the number of false accounts to attract Internet users to shopping sites or scams. Changes to the algorithm of Google, launched a week ago the United States, however, may decrease the effectiveness of such sites.

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