Six Botnets Send 85% of Spam

By Greg McNevin

March 4, 2008: According to the net security firm Marshall, a mere six botnets are responsible for a whopping 85 percent of the world's spam in February.

Out of this six, the Srizbi and Rustok botnets are heavyweights, sending out 39 and 21 percent of of messages respectively. 

Marshall notes that Srizbi is quite formidable as it is "extremely stealthy, operating in full kernel mode, which, among other things, allows it to hide its network activities and bypass sniffer tools."  

What is more interesting about the botnets identified by Marshall is that there appears to be some crossover in the spam campaigns they are running, with more than one network pumping out emails for the same "product". 

"It appears the spammers behind this campaign have access to more than one botnet to distribute their messages. It's also a possibility that one group controls more than one of these botnets," said Bradley Anstis, vice president of products for Marshal. 

"By highlighting these spam botnets, we hope the security industry can collectively target these major spamming sources and in doing so significantly reduce spam volumes."

In other spam news, and 18 year-old New Zealander fingered as the mastermind of one international network of cybercriminals, and has appeared in court charged with a variety of hacking offences.  

It is alleged that the teenager, Thorn Walker from Whitianga on the North Island, and his network had infected 1.3 million computers around the world and was using them for a variety of computer crimes including sending spam, running denial of service attacks, and stealing bank details.

 If found guilty Walker could face up to ten years in gaol.

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