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Spam emails back to status quo after holidays
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 11 January 2011, 19:11 IST
Bangalore: After it was reported that a decline in the number of spam emails have been registered globally, the spammers were back to work on January 10. Following a lull in such messages in the Christmas period, the number of spams soared and 67 billion of them were sent in one day.
The virus infected computers that sends out the vast number of spams are called botnets. One such botnet known as Rustock, which was responsible for sending around half of them, had suddenly stopped activity in December 25 that led to the decline in number of spams sent.
However it restarted its work yesterday according to security firm NetWitness. As per BBC reports, the number of spams was still less than what used to be sent in August 2010, a time when around 200 billion spam messages were sent a day.
Rustock's yesterday's spam messages accounted for 1.5 percent of all global spam. No reason could be traced out about why the botnet had suddenly gone silent for a two week period.
The most common spam mail content comprise of pharmaceutical promotions. The botnets target internet users primarily through their email inbox, while more recent spammers are also seen to be appearing in social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
