Teams of US researchers have hacked into spam systems to reveal the inventions and intentions behind them.
Teams of researchers from US universities have said that they hacked into spam networks in order to further examine the mechanics of the systems.
The teams from the University of California in both Berkeley and San Diego released a report on their findings which related their methods and intentions.
A total of three spam campaigns collectively sending a total of 469 million spam messages were tracked through a network of computers hijacked by the Storm botnet.
The researchers found that as the cost of sending the messages is so cheap – an estimated $80 per one million – spammers can make an annual net revenue as much as $1.75 million a year.
It was also discovered that spam filters are reasonably effective, cutting around one quarter of spam sent to inboxes.
Last week, MessageLabs research revealed that spam is on the rise as anti-spam systems, specifically Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHAs), are increasingly being disabled.
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