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Europe and the US Sees Spam Levels Fall
No comments · Posted by Benny Henson in Law & Guidelines, News
A new report from Kaspersky Lab reveals a significant drop in the volumes of spam across Western Europe and the US.
The Russian internet security firm said that the decline was largely down to the success of anti-botnet campaigns by Western agencies. It particularly cited the case of the Pushdo/Cutwail botnet, which had more than 20 of its control centres shut down in November 2010, as well as a similar operation mounted against the Bredolab botnet.
Kapersky Lab also mentioned that the UK had enjoyed a notable fall in the amount of malware found infesting e-mail traffic – with it dropping to under 3 per cent last November. This meant that the nation dropped to 10th place in the malware league tables, whereas until the end of last year it had been in the top three.
However, the company said that although overall volumes of spam had declined, the amount emanating from the UK was still greater than both Germany and France, with Britain responsible for 4.3 per cent of all spam worldwide.
“Immediately before the start of the holidays we witnessed a dip in the amount of spam,” said Kaspersky Lab senior spam analyst Maria Namestnikova. “This is a seasonal phenomenon – at the end of the year the amount of spam mailings always falls off because a lot of the infected botnet computers are switched off.”
Nevertheless, spam was still about in December, and tried to piggyback into people’s e-mail inboxes on the back of the WikiLeaks affair. Kaspersky said that spammers tried to persuade computer users to spread spam by hiding it in WikiLeaks links.
“Spam is usually dominated by the Christmas and New Year holiday theme in December, but in 2010 it had to share the limelight with WikiLeaks, which once again underlines just how serious the scandal surrounding the website was at the end of the year,” Ms Namestnikova noted.
botnet · Bredolab · Cutwail · Cutwail botnet · malware · Pushdo · spam · spammers