Global Spam Levels in Mysterious Month-on-Month Fall

Global Spam Levels in Mysterious Month-on-Month Fall – Update

Global Spam Levels in Mysterious Month-on-Month Fall – Update: "

Yesterday I wrote here that global spam levels had dropped mysteriously month on month since August 2010 from a high of about a quarter of a trillion messages a day to about 50 billion. Just to show how quickly everything can change in the world of technology, it all suddenly changed again yesterday.

New reports came in shortly after I wrote the article that the Rustock botnet, which has been responsible for as much as 48% of all global spam and which went suddenly and inexplicably silent in December has sprung back into life.

Overall, the level of spam sent worldwide is still down considerably on previous levels and there is still no apparent reason for this.

In an interview with the BBC, Alex Cox of NetWitness said ”As best we can tell, they took a holiday, The people running Rustock are running a business – albeit an illegitimate one – so maybe they needed time off too.” This was the best guess anyone so far has been able to offer.

Rustock was expected to have sent out 67 billion spam emails yesterday, more than doubling the amount sent worldwide the day before.

While Rustock has restarted its activities, it is too soon to say, according to security experts, whether spem levels will again reach the volumes we saw back in August.

© Mike Halsey (MVP) for gHacks Technology News, 2011. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us, digg, facebook, reddit, twitter
Post tags: botnet, rustock, spam

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