Europe Still Top Source of Spam Three Months Running

[Tank_Guy#3]

Any thoughts?

Europe still top source of spam

By Tom Espiner
http://www.news.com/Europe-still-top-source-of-spam/2100-7349_3-6229352.html

Story last modified Wed Feb 06 06:48:45 PST 2008


European spam networks have pumped out more unsolicited e-mail than those in the U.S. for the third month in a row, according to security vendor Symantec.
Symantec called this a "significant shift" in spam trends as, historically, compromised U.S. computers have been used to send spam, and many spammers have been U.S.-based.

Fredrik Sjostedt, one of Symantec's European product marketing managers, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday that Symantec suspects gangs are taking advantage of the increasing European broadband market.

"The penetration of broadband is tremendous in Europe," Sjostedt said. "We've now clearly overtaken the U.S. in sending spam."

Symantec also believes many spammers are now based in Europe. "Historically the majority of spammers were U.S.-based, but now we're seeing a lot of Eastern European and Russian spam gangs active. Spammers tend to use closer turf as a jump off point," Sjostedt said.

More broadband means compromised computers can send spam faster, while gangs are increasingly becoming organized, said the Symantec manager.

"We've moved away from traditional, individual spammers, to loosely tied groups of spam senders, malware coders, and people selling access to botnets," Sjostedt said.

The largest botnet sending spam originated with the Storm worm, Sjostedt said. Storm is a network of compromised computers with sophisticated attack and defense mechanisms, including "fast-flux" command and control servers, which frequently change location.

"Storm is the most prevalent distribution method" for spam, Sjostedt said. While most spam relays are in Europe, botnets are global phenomena, he pointed out.

Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.

 

[Cutlass]

We should have the NSA redirect it's efforts to tracking these suckers down and give them a free all expenses paid vacation to beautiful downtown Guantanamo Bay.

 

[azzaman333]

I don't really care where I'm getting my spam from, since it all gets deleted anyway.

 

[Shadylookin]

We should have the NSA redirect it's efforts to tracking these suckers down and give them a free all expenses paid vacation to beautiful downtown Guantanamo Bay.

I don't think the eastern europeans would greet us as liberators

I don't really care where I'm getting my spam from, since it all gets deleted anyway.

ya but the main problem isn't that it takes 2 seconds to delete a message but rather that it hogs up bandwidth

 

[lutzj]

ya but the main problem isn't that it takes 2 seconds to delete a message but rather that it hogs up bandwidth

Just delete your spam faster. Then, you will spend one second deleting it and lose one second to bandwidth.

 

[Shadylookin]

Just delete your spam faster. Then, you will spend one second deleting it and lose one second to bandwidth.

it's not my bandwidth(I don't really get spam anyway) but the entire internet's that gets clogged with useless crap. A single computer can send out millions of messages a day. Plus once the spam has already reached you it's already finished using the bandwidth.