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Re: [News] Windows Zombies (and SPAM) Step Up a Notch

  • Subject: Re: [News] Windows Zombies (and SPAM) Step Up a Notch
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 16:55:35 +0000
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: schestowitz.com / Netscape
  • References: <1268086.A99HM569cI@schestowitz.com> <4555D0D6.6060509@bullet3.fsnet.oc.ku>
  • Reply-to: newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • User-agent: KNode/0.7.2
__/ [ Robert Newson ] on Saturday 11 November 2006 13:29 \__

> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> 
>> What's with all this spam?
>> 
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | At North Shore-LIJ Heath System, a network of hospitals based in
>> | Great Neck, N.Y., with about 12,000 e-mail users, there's been an
>> | 80% increase in spam received in the last 45 days, says system
>> | architect Steve Young, and most of it is image spam.
> 
> I think he answered his ownb question:
> 
>      ``most of it is image spam.''
> 
> It's not that there's been an increase in spam, just an increase in spam
> getting through - the spammers have found the weak spot in the anti-spam
> armour - using the same technique that web sites use to ensure it's a human
> and not a computer: an image - and is now attacking that; if a solution is
> found to interpret the images, it'll open up all those sites protected by
> the only-human-can-read image.
> ...
> 
>> Increased spam levels connected with aggressive botnet activities
>> 
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | MessageLabs announced the results of its MessageLabs Intelligence
>> | Report for October 2006. In this report, MessageLabs highlights the
>> | sudden increase in spam levels as spammers gear up to the holiday
>> | season, attributed to a huge rise in recent botnet activities and the
>> | latest outbreak of the Warezov virus, responsible for dropping an
>> | aggressive spam Trojan.
>> `----
>> 
>> http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=4359
> 
> It's more a case of the spam that's been swept under the carpet finally
> filling all the space there and no more will fit, especially as it's
> changed form.
> 
> Most of what we're seeing is the result of spam filters  that hide the spam
> breaking down.

My experience suggests otherwise (so does everybody else's, based on those
whom I talk to). I was receiving about 1000 SPAM a day 3 weeks ago and now
it's about 2000. Whether filtering at the senders' end (outgoing daemon) are
the reason, I can't tell. Either way, Windows zombies that deliver SPAM are
far worse than malovalent relays. Zombie armies can have millions of UIP's
(location-independent) and many different SMTP servers. This defeats
blacklists and also bans ligitimate servers (even our University's server
was blacklisted by spamcop.net at one point). That, as a matter of fact, is
the reason (IMHO, I must stress) SPAM will end when people control their own
machines. SPAM relays won't endure. Rightful ownership and /identity/ (e.g.
IP address) is a way of separating criminals from standard users. Currently
there's this big intersection... a mishmash of noise. I spend a lot of time
on SPAM this morning...

Not fair...

Best wishes,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      | Data lacking semantics is currency in an island
http://Schestowitz.com  |  SuSE GNU/Linux   ¦     PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
         run-level 5  Oct 18 14:45                   last=S  
      http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine

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