Researchers have made a huge dent in a major variant of the Pushdo botnet, virtually crippling the network by working with hosting providers to take down about two thirds of the command-and-control servers involved in the botnet.
More than 40 percent of the world’s spam is coming from a single network of computers that computer security experts continue to battle,
Spammers know that if they include a direct link to their site that their spam messages will not go through so they use URL shortening services to redirect you to their site if you click on the link in the spam message.
Consumers Don’t Relate Bot Infections to Risky Behavior As Millions Continue to Click on Spam
Latest reports have spam accounting for more than 95 percent of all email messages. You can thank botnets for most of that. Here’s what we’re up against.
In part 1 of my series, I looked at which botnet sends the most spam, by total number of messages sent at the recipient level and not the envelope level. In part 2, I looked at which one sends the most spam by total amount of bytes that they emit.
There are a couple of ways to measure which botnet sends the most spam. On the one hand, botnets can send 1 spam message but address it to a lot of different recipients, thus putting the cost of delivery heavily onto the recipient.
Around the Internet, and even on this blog, various analyses have been done on botnets and which one is responsible for sending the most spam. Whether it’s Rustock, Cutwail, or one of the new kids on the block (grum, gheg, or donbot), I don’t really see any consensus on which one is the spammiest.
We all know how tricky it can be to stay ahead of spammers, and their “always-evolving” methods. I know that our CudaMail.com specialists are constantly adapting and tweaking rules and filters to stay ahead.
Here’s a story from the Register about how modern spam filtering has forced a long-time Canadian publication to have to change it’s name. It’s a good thing that Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls are easy to tweak and adjust!
Venerable magazine to adopt less suggestive title
By Lester Haines
Posted on theRegister.co.uk 13th January 2010 14:41 GMT
Publisher Deborah Morrison explained to AFP: “The Beaver was an impediment online. Several readers asked us to change the title because their spam filters at home or at work were blocking it. I’ve even had emails bounce back because I had inadvertently typed the term in the heading."
She added: “Nearly a century ago, it probably seemed the perfect name for a magazine about the fur trade and Canada’s northwest frontier. There was only one interpretation for the word then. But you’re likely to find a lot of [porn] sites now if you search for the title of our history magazine online.”
The 90-year-old title will, after the Feb/March issue, be known as Canada’s History.
Other Beavers of note which can be found online are the newspaper of the London School of Economics Students’ Union, a Toronto restaurant offering a range of tongue-tingling delights and a film starring Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. ®
The original story from TheRegister.
On Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 06:20 (GMT), Project Honey Pot achieved a
milestone: receiving its 1 billionth spam message.
|
Technical Services Manager, and Optrics' point person for email security |
| Shaun Sturby, MCSE | |
