Spam plummets as gang leaves net

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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 1:44 pm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7725492.stm

Quote:

The closure of a web hosting firm that is believed to have had spam gangs as clients has led to a drastic reduction in junk mail.

Two US internet service providers have pulled the plug on the firm McColo following an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper.

It is believed that it hosted gangs running botnets - networks of computers that have been taken over by criminals to send malicious software and spam.

According to MessageLabs, botnets are responsible for over 90% of spam.

This bit got me, I wonder what the average lad's percentage is?

Quote:

A recent study by computer scientists from the University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) found that spammers manage to turn a profit despite only getting one response to every 12.5m emails they send.

Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 6:54 am

As a network admin, I certainly haven't seen much of a reduction at all.
It's still business as usual for us, with having to deal with spam every day.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 26 Sep 2008 Posts: 689

To the gangs involved it's probably about the same as closing down a lad's email would be.

By amazing coincidence I'd just read the very same article from a completely different source.

TV advertising was considered succesful if your response rate was above 0.2% for a regional advert. Turning a profit on a response of 0.000008% is staggering.

Baiting Guru Joined: 11 May 2004 Posts: 2163

McColo is closed. A major sender in spam

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/855?ref=rss

The depeering of an Internet service provider has resulted in a drop in Internet-wide spam of as much as 75 percent, security firms said Wednesday.

On Tuesday, two major Internet service providers stopped routing traffic for McColo, a hosting provider based in San Jose, Calif., essentially making all sites hosted by the service inaccessible. The action followed investigations by security researchers that found that McColo had become the preferred home of for many botnets' command and control servers, according to an article in the Washington Post.

"It was like night and day," said Matt Sergeant, anti-spam technologist with MessageLabs. "The second that they went offline the drop started."

MessageLabs, McAfee, Symantec, and Arbor Networks -- as well as other security firms -- noted the drop, though the companies differed on the magnitude, with estimates varying between 60 percent and 75 percent.

The depeering of McColo follows significant efforts by Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs to track down Internet service providers that hosted malicious and criminals servers while ignoring their owners' actions. In September, Atrivo, an Internet service provider based in California, went offline after its sole remaining upstream provider ceased to route its traffic. A drop in spam was also witnessed by observers after the disconnection of Atrivo.

Online criminals jumped from Atrivo to McColo, according to an analysis published by SecureWorks in October. MessageLabs' Sergeant believes, this time, spam will again ramp up as online criminals find a new place to roost.

"I don't believe this will have a lasting effect on spam volumes," Sergeant said. "The people responsible for this are making a lot of money. They are now going to work to get back to a position where they are making a lot of money again."

Symantec is the owner of SecurityFocus.

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