Spam bounces back from record low

All spam from February 2010. Click for larger image

A dramatic decline in levels of e-mail advertising Viagra products and herbal medicinal products has caused a precipitous drop in global spam levels – but today the unsolicited messages showed the first signs of a huge comeback.

Pharmaceutical promotions typically account for around 64% of all e-mail spam globally – around 60bn messages a day. This fell to as low as 0.1% in the period from Christmas, accounts for a relatively small 70 m messages. "It is a drop in the ocean compared [previous spam levels]," said Paul Wood, senior analyst at cyber security company Symantec.

Volume of total email spam fell to its lowest point in two years last month from 200bn a day in August for around 30bn daily at the end of December.

But today that number has risen sharply to 70bn e-mails in the first signs of a resurgence since spam levels flatlined for two weeks ago.

The majority of spam sent by networks of virus-infected computers, known as botnets. Botnet responsible for just under half of all spam, known as Rustock, ceased activity on Christmas day, send pharmaceutical spam to a new one.

Percentage of spam produced from the Rustock botnet.

However, increased activity, that accommodation Rustock prompting security experts to predict that spam levels in the next 24 hours could increase exponentially. Yesterday Rustock accounted for 1.5% of all global spam, while this afternoon, the figure stands 30% and is rising all the time.

"This is a marked increase. It is still not the same as spam levels before Christmas, but its a sign that the Rustock simply had gone quiet, for whatever reason, the "wood told the guardian.

"It is very unusual that they would go quiet of their own accord – which is why this eye-catching much more than previous occasions – but there must be a reason for it, as I suspect, we get a sense of it in a timely manner."

Rustock botnets and other is connected to the recently closed the site Spamit.com, which was credited with served up a large amount of global spam.

Those who are running spam campaigns, the most popular which is unsolicited Viagra advertising, can measure their campaigns via Spamit success and then get paid on the basis of its performance.

Exact figures for the monetary value of the global spam industry are difficult to come, but some Court documents from former prosecutions have quoted a "conservative" figure of $ 100bn (£ 64bn) a year, according to wood.

Targeting unwitting Internet users via their email inbox is the primary route for spammers. But increasingly, scammers move to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Hundreds of Twitter users found themselves accidentally tweeting advertising for an acai berry diet last month, as hackers broke into the accounts of users whose password had been exposed by an attack on make Magazine Web sites.

Social networks are an easy target for spammers is due to set up a plausible-looking profile and hide malicious hyperlinks by using the popular URL shorteners like bit.LY to ease of use.

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