New botnet 'accounts for over half of all spam'
09/05/2008 13:04:34
A single botnet now accounts for more than half of all spam on the internet, according to new research.
IT security provider Marshall has conducted a study indicating that the Srizbi botnet has been increasing its network since early 2008 and is now the world's largest spam distributer.
Bradley Anstis, vice president of products at Marshall, said that Srizbi is the single greatest spam threat the company has ever seen.
"At its peak, the highly publicised Storm botnet only accounted for 20 per cent of spam. Srizbi now produces more spam than all the other botnets combined," he added.
Mr Anstis went on to say that Srizbi distributes copies of its own malware in malicious spam campaigns using social engineering to trick PC users into infecting their own computers.
This week, a study conducted by IT security firm Finjan found that hackers have stolen business and personal data from companies worldwide and are currently storing as many as 5,388 compromised files on a single server.
