Global spam drops by a third after Rustock botnet takedown

SPAM EMAILS DECREASED worldwide by a third after the Rustock spam botnet was taken down as part of a major operation by US law enforcement that was assisted by Microsoft.

A Symantec report said there was a 33.6 per cent drop in global spam in the days that followed the crackdown, which saw Microsoft's digital crimes unit and US marshals raid web hosting firms throughout the US to rid the world of Rustock once and for all.

The big decline wasn't a major surprise, as at the beginning of March Rustock had been sending around 13.82 billion spam mails a day, accounting for 28.5 per cent sent from all botnets. This figure was as high as 44.1 billion, 47.5 per cent of all spam, at the end of 2010.

The problem with getting rid of something as big as Rustock is that there are botnet contenders happy to take its place. Bagle has now taken over from Rustock as the most active spam spewing botnet, with its spam output at its highest since 2009.

But it will take more recovery by the criminals to get spam levels as high as they were, since the crackdown was a major operation that was coordinated among a number of organisations.

But when you think that there are still approximately 33 billion spam emails sent out each day, there is still a lot of work to do. µ