M86 reports that the major spam botnets such as Rustock, Pushdo (or Cutwail) and Mega-D continue to dominate spam output, supported by second-tier botnets such as Grum, and Lethic. Rustock alone pushed out 34 per cent of spam in 2H09. Pushdo zombie drones puked out one in five spam messages (20 per cent), with Mega-D zombies account for 9 per cent of the global junk mail nuisance.
Just like Mega-D before it, the Lethic botnet has returned from the grave since it was decapitated by the combined efforts of security firms and ISPs in early January, a sign that criminal hackers are building more resilient systems with better "disaster recovery" features.
"The spamming botnets are constantly in flux, waxing and waning, morphing, becoming obsolete, being replaced, taken down, and upgraded," M86 explains. "It is important to identify the major contributors to the volume of spam, so the industry can take action against them, such as the botnet takedowns that have already occurred."
The link for this article located at The Register UK is no longer available.