A study by internet security firm Marshal has revealed the biggest source of spam emails over the past month or so. The story has been forwarded around the net as "40 per cent of spam comes from just one source" – which makes you think, well, why doesn't some intrepid law enforcement officer just get in there and unplug the bloody machine? The reason is, of course, that this "one source" is in fact one botnet, a network of tens of thousands of machines belonging to people like you and me.
We're unwitting pawns in the spam industry – indeed, 6 botnets are responsible for 80 per cent of all spam that we receive. It's even possible that you could have sent spam to yourself. Embarrassing, isn't it?
The evil botnet named by Marshal is known as Srizbi, and as you might expect, it's a fairly sophisticated beast. It runs in kernel mode, which allows it to hide its network activities; it provides stats to the spammer controlling the botnet with details of any dead email addresses in the colossal mailing list (back in December this comprised some 162 million addresses); and within the spam it often includes links to sites containing more copies of the Srizbi bot, allowing it to spread even further.
This study at the end of last year gives an interesting breakdown of how Srizbi works, based on a flood of spam in October last year which promoted Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. By grabbing the software used to run the bot, Secure Works are able to show us the few simple steps a spammer has to go through in order to send several million emails.
What I have trouble understanding is why, when a fix for this particular trojan has been available through companies such as Symantec for several months – indeed, they label the risk as "very low" – it's managing to be by far the biggest sender of spam? It can only mean that, despite omnipresent warnings, people still have a very lax attitude to internet security.
The other burning question, of course, is why men somehow believe that taking pills will magically enlarge particular parts of their anatomy. These days, 70 per cent of all spam promotes "male enhancement". There's a reason for that. We're credulous imbeciles.
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Posted by: Rainfew | Thursday, 10 December 2009 at 01:45 PM