Botnets are large networks of compromised computers which run malicious software in the background, pumping out thousands of SPAM messages unbeknown to the owners.

“The system works by exploiting a trick that spammers use to defeat email filters. As spam is churned out, subtle changes are typically incorporated into the messages to confound spam filters. Each message is generated from a template that specifies the message content and how it should be varied. The team reasoned that analysing such messages could reveal the template that created them. And since the spam template describes the entire range of the emails a bot will send, possessing it might provide a watertight method of blocking spam from that bot.”

To test their strategy, the team installed a previously catpured botnet onto a machine in their posession. They monitored outbound traffic and analyzed approimately 1000 spam messages—less than 10 minutes’ work for most bots—then reverse engineered the template.

“Knowledge of that template then enabled filters to block further spam from that bot with 100 per cent accuracy.”

Read the full article from NewsScientist

Yesterday Alan Ralsky, often referred to as the “Godfather of Spam”, was sentenced to 4-years in a federal prison. Ralsky’s operation pulled in millions of dollars through “pump and dump” schemes of thinly traded stocks in companies you’ve never heard of. Millions of emails would be sent out in an automated fashion via botnets created and run by Ralsky’s staff touting IPOs worth buying into. These stocks often were trading for mere pennies and—amazingly—some would want in on the action. Stock prices would jump at which time the shares would be dumped.

Just how lucrative is this? According to the government’s court documents, here are list of payments documented from one month, July 2005:

• July 5: $180,826.61
• July 11: $211,595.76
• July 14: $13,532
• July 22: $780,295.98
• July 26: $65,590.71
• July 27: $424,963.73
• July 27: $23,702

Ralsky and company earned more than $2.6 million between May 1 and December 1, 2005 alone.

Read the full story here: Arstechnica

~Mailshine

• Males receive 15 more spam messages per day than females.
• Clicking “unsubscribe” provide useless in most cases, and often resulted in increased levels of spam
• Providing mailing addresses when attempting to receive free brochures, eyeliner, or an iPod resulted in incredible amounts of junk-mail at the doorstep.
• 18% of all spam received by US volunteers came in the form of phishing attempts (bank scams, Nigerian scams, etc).
• US participants received 65% more spam than participants from any other country.
• In almost all cases, the most notable side-effect was PC slowdowns thanks to spyware, malware and so on.

Read the full article here.