After McColo Takedown, Spam Surges Again
Spammers have regrouped and are finding ways to send more junk mail despite recent efforts by security experts.
Spam levels dropped by almost half when rogue ISP (Internet service provider) McColo was taken offline in November. But some new botnets and even older ones are churning out more spam.
"At the current rates, we'll be back at those pre-McColo takedown levels probably within the next three to five weeks," said Adam Swidler, senior product marketing manager for Google Message Security, also known as Postini.
Google said Monday it has seen a 156 percent increase in spam since McColo went offline. McColo hosted the so-called command-and-control servers for botnets that are used to instruct PCs to send spam. The botnets included Rustock, Srizbi, Pushdo/Cutwail, Mega-D and Gheg.
McColo's takedown for the most part killed off the Srizbi botnet, which was blamed for sending a large proportion of the world's spam. But other botnets -- which are essentially legions of hacked computers configured to send spam -- are picking up the slack.
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