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Botnets Plus Spam Equals Trouble

Daniel Fleshbourne   on 08 January 2008 - 10:34 · 4 comments & 3386 views

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Cybercrime is going upscale. Criminals are not just putting together bigger botnets--more than a million computers in some cases--they are also adopting the principles of modern marketing to get their products onto your users' computers. This has implications that will be coming soon to thousands of mailboxes near you. At the center of all this activity are not spammers or phishers, who increasingly outsource the delivery of their e-mail campaigns, but professional botnet herders, most of whom rent out their networks of infected machines through an elaborate underground marketplace.

Where botnets were once more or less a sideline for spammers and phishers, they are now a full-time, tightly focused and highly competitive business. Like any other businesspeople, these professional herders concentrate on improving their products by delivering better service to their customers. Better service, in this case, is defined as slashing through the defenses of even more computers even faster. These new herders are a lot more agile than those who preceded them. They have discovered that mass, velocity and agility are the keys to this new environment.

View: The full story @ PCWorld

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#1 vetneufuse on 08 Jan 2008 - 12:19
Speaking of spam I have seen a MAJOR increase in the past day at work... we got maybe 40-50 a day, yesterday it was 2,500 ish per mailbox on average... something is up... and on my verizon account I saw a major increase yesterday also... about 2-3 a minute... use to be 1-2 a day
#2 undomiel on 08 Jan 2008 - 12:52
When I started my new job as a network admin the company I was with was almost completely bots. I got a call shortly after while I was cleaning things up from the ISP threatening to suspend our internet connection. Apparently the bots were being used for cracking.
#3 spmccord on 08 Jan 2008 - 13:47
I got 50 at home in less than an hour last night...There needs to be a few public hangings for spammers!
#4 hapbt on 08 Jan 2008 - 15:59
there needs to be a way to stop people from telling you how much spam they got

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