For the average user spam has always been an annoyance. For the average spammer it has always been about making money. For the criminal gangs that have muscled in on this lucrative industry during the last few years it is now about territory and control. Control, that is, of the botnets behind the malware distribution networks that they rent out to the spamming middle men to enable them to ply their trade in relative safety from the crippled arm of the law.

Leading AV researchers at Kaspersky have now identified three criminal gangs which are participating in an increasingly desperate battle of the botnets. This turf war is, as all turf wars have a habit of doing, turning nasty and it is the average computer who is getting caught ion the crossfire. No longer are the gangs happy to settle for a slice of the spam pie, they want it all. And that means control over as many compromised third party computers to create the biggest of mega zombie botnets. To accomplish this, the gangs behind the Bagle, Warezov and Zhelatin worms are turning their attention to ridding those compromised computers of rival gang malware infections in order to install their own and gain that control.