July 12, 2008

Report: Botnets Winning Spam Wars

Commtouch's 2008 Q2 Email Threats Trend Report is claiming that botnets are winning the spam wars as they're acquiring and using new infected systems faster than reputation and source analysis systems can identify compromised systems and servers.

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"Zombie networks or 'botnets' have become so enormous and agile, they are flooding email with increasingly malicious threats," said Amir Lev, Commtouch's CTO and President. "Many technologies attempt to identify and block email from senders known for sending malicious content, but they are not updated rapidly enough to keep up. By the time these lists are updated the threat has shifted to another set of zombies, leaving customers unprotected. On the one hand, ISPs have an obligation to protect their customers from unwanted email; however, they also have a responsibility to ensure that their customers are not a source of unwanted email by being part of these botnets."

As I've stated before, we're at war with the spammers and botnet herders and it's an escalating arms race. Utilizing technology to block and stop them is only a partial solution. There needs to be more investigations and arrests by law enforcement as the only way to truly solve the problem is to throw the spammers and botnet herders behind bars. There are not many of them and if we get serious about tracking them down and making them pay, there won't be as many kids tomorrow willing to fill their shoes.

[Commtouch 2008 Q2 Email Threats Trend Report via [The Tech Herald]