That Happened!

New York - Internet users were the beneficiary of a slight reprieve in regards to spam earlier this month, as web host McColo was shut down on November 13th for its involvement with a string of high profile botnets. Based out of San Jose, the company was said to responsible for hosting a good 70% of all spam traffic worldwide (including that of major spam player Srizbi botnet). It seems, however, that the botnets will not be deterred so casually. Numbers are once again on the rise after the two week setback.

Matt Sergeant of Symantec-MessageLabs has stated that in recent days spam levels have once again climbed to a startling 37% of the original capacity. It is expected that with the passing of another couple weeks spam levels will be back up to their original levels, if not exceeding those numbers. The creators of the malware, particularly Srizbi which was originally thought to be completely defunct after the shutdown of McColo, seem to have remained one step ahead in their planning. The only hindrance to themselves being to procure a new host/bandwidth provider. Experts say that the authors of said spyware had created several “rescue zones” throughout the internet which were designed to intercept any infected machines and reroute them to a new command center located somewhere in Estonia. The ultimate effect of course was an instant revival of spam distribution. Now those combating the spyware threat have jurisdiction to contend with– shutting down a hosting company in the United States may be one thing, but halfway across the world is another issue entirely.

The virtually immediate resurgence of these spam providers tends to leave one questioning just how futile of a war technology experts are facing. Much like the war on drugs, abusers continue to remain one step ahead of the curve in an endless spiral of “cat and mouse games,” as it was called by Marshal TRACE analyst Phil Hay. While we as a whole continue to find a means to weed out the threats, they continue to learn from their mistakes and distribute in full force. As long as the spread of these spyware programs remains profitable for both hackers and foreign hosts alike, the internet will remain tangled inside this vicious circle. It would appear that the only hope for the web of tomorrow is to remain educated about such threats and continue to promote better usage of virus protection (such as McAfee and TrendMicro) among computer enthusiasts.