Digital Common Sense

February 20, Channel Register (UK) — Spammers adopt stealth tactics. Botnet controllers are switching to stealth tactics in a bid to avoid detection. Instead of mass mail−outs of spam and malicious code, they are adopting slower distribution tactics in a bid to avoid appearing on corporate security radars. UK−based Web security firm BlackSpider Technologies reports that one huge botnet, responsible for issuing 50 million identical spam e−mails per day, compromises at least 150,000 distinct IP addresses. The use of a large number of machines −− each sending out an average of 330 e−mails a day or around 40 per hour during the course of a working day −− is a change from prior botnets when only a handful of compromised e−mail servers would have been used to do the same job. It’s well known that packages such as Send−safe.com are used by spammers to control the distribution of junk mail broadband−connected PCs infected by viruses such as SoBig, but BlackSpider’s figures on the mail−out rate from compromised machines add a fresh perspective to the problem. BlackSpider Technologies CTO James Kay said this low mail−out rate means users of compromised machines will not notice anything unusual with their net connection. Because they don’t notice anything amiss, the spambot remains undetected.
Source: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/02/20/stealth_spam

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I hope nobody’s surprised that spammers are shifting tactics to up the ante. It’s sort of a duh ephiphany.

Filed by Ken at 11:06 am under Technology