Introduction

The third quarter of 2010 started off with several favorable events for the anti-spam industry. In August, the security intelligence firm, LastLine, worked with a task force to shut down over 20 control centers used by the Pushdo / Cutwail botnet which was responsible for approximately 10% of all spam worldwide. The threat posed by this botnet was not just the sheer volume of spam that it distributed, but also its connection to the spread of particularly malicious programs such as Zbot (ZeuS) and TDSS.

When the botnet’s command centers were closed down, an enormous number of bots ceased distributing spam as they were no longer under the spammers’ control. Nevertheless, hoping that the situation would stay that way was futile. As was shown when the McColo and Lethic botnets were shut down, it only takes about a month to restore a botnet by linking infected computers to new control centers. The volume of spam then returns to its previous levels.

More: More: http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792147/Spam_in_the_Third_Quarter_of_2010