Sensible Erection | Researchers take down botnet responsible for a fifth of world's spam

Thursday, 19 July 2012

Researchers take down botnet responsible for a fifth of world's spam

quote [ If you notice a huge drop in the amount of pharmaceutical spam you're receiving, you're not imagining things. Security researchers say they were able to take down "Grum", the spam server behind about 18 percent of global spam. ]

I'll miss some of those hilarious ads.

[by maryyugo@7:13pmGMT] [+10 Good]

Comments

snowfox said @ 7:31pm GMT on 19th Jul
B1663R P3N15! 0RD3R N0W!!!!

spazm said @ 8:03pm GMT on 19th Jul
BUY VIGARA NOW!
-2.80$ Family Pack (wtf?)
You will love the results on your organ!
Give her more of yourself!

cb361 said @ 8:07pm GMT on 19th Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
This is one of the things I've never understood. If you're going to program a pattern matching spam detector, it's less than trivial to add the ability to spot leetspeak. Also, who wants the end of their penis to drag along the ground anyway?

snowfox said @ 9:08pm GMT on 19th Jul
I am pretty sure they have done that. Spam filters are much better than they used to be.

cb361 said @ 9:17pm GMT on 19th Jul
Yep. When I get spam nowadays, I can't even read what it's trying to sell me.

cb361 said @ 9:49pm GMT on 19th Jul [Score:4 Funny]
I thought I was buying black market viagra, and I got a Russian mail-order bride instead. Which wouldn't be so bad, except it's happened five times so far and they won't stop bickering with one another. And the longer this goes on, the more I need the viagra to keep them all happy, but the more mail-order brides I get. It's a vicious circle.

arrowhen said @ 10:30pm GMT on 19th Jul [Score:5 Funny]
If you start running low on space remember you can stack them inside each other.

theolypse said @ 12:38am GMT on 20th Jul
tagline

happiest_sadist said @ 5:50am GMT on 20th Jul
A viscous circle, perhaps?

robinett said @ 6:12am GMT on 20th Jul
Piers Anthony

Barnabas_Truman said @ 11:01pm GMT on 19th Jul

cyrano said @ 9:42pm GMT on 19th Jul [Score:5 Good]
We do add leetspeak, we just don't automatically block a message on it, because there's any number of legitimate reason why it's presence does not indicate spam. Just like automatically blocking on "penis", "viagra", etc., doesn't work particularly well. There's got to be a mix of factors that trigger a block (like, if it's sent from an ISP dial-up netblock AND we've seen messages kinda like this before and they were spam AND penis, then it's spam). Each vendor has it's own special sauce on what that formula is, and most have lots of knobs to locally adjust behavior.

This is made more difficult for us because the spammers are doing things like sending 100's of thousands of very slightly differently constructed emails looking for the 0.1% or whatever that are *just* different enough not to trigger the filters. Hate those fuckers.

And...of course...this effort on our part is anything but appreciated. I got read the riot act the other day from a user incensed that she had to, with her own precious finger, delete 2 whole spams that day. We had blocked something over 65k spams in the last 24 hrs, which was 60-65% of the entire mail volume. It's a 500 person org. Smile and wave, boys....smile and wave...

cb361 said @ 9:56pm GMT on 19th Jul
That's what I assumed. That you'd simply decrypt the leet and subject it to the same heuristics as plain text.

And plenty of people (myself included) appreciate your work, keeping our mailboxes (almost) empty of spam.

papango said @ 11:11pm GMT on 19th Jul
I appreciate it. You can't stop my mum from forwarding on bullshit chain mail, but almost nothing else gets through.

cb361 said @ 7:22am GMT on 20th Jul
Ohhh, I got another one. You better put this on your list too.

RE:AWideSp ectr um O fDru gsOnli ne how he got thatimpressionspoke her voice

Don't bother to thank me.

mrcucumber said @ 2:33pm GMT on 20th Jul
Where is the money being made, how much, roughly, and how does that offset all the energy in trying to send new mail?

cyrano said @ 3:09pm GMT on 22nd Jul

Well, it costs for all practical purposes no more to send 100 million emails than to send the first one, so if the spammers only make money on 0.0001% of the recipients, then they win.

There's any number of ways the spammers monetize their activity. Right now, the biggest thorn in my side is a very organized, persistent group that sends spam trying to get the recipient to click a link to purchase an Adobe or other software "upgrade" which a) is actually free, b) has been modified to install malware. They make money, millions of dollars worth, because...fuckall people are deeply stupid. Sorry...these guys are making money on the front end purchase, by selling data stolen via the malware and by selling access to the infected machines (to send more spam, etc).

It's a very profitable, low risk activity for the patient and careful criminal.

edga alunpo said @ 8:00am GMT on 20th Jul
Ah yes. according to the old addage..

Don't let your ding dong dangle in the dust!

Little Dick said @ 8:36pm GMT on 19th Jul
Where?

afrasr said @ 8:03pm GMT on 19th Jul
It'll be replaced with something else next week

De_Wr0ng said @ 8:50pm GMT on 19th Jul [Score:3 Funny]

ENZ said @ 10:56pm GMT on 19th Jul
I haven't even seen an email like that since I had AOL.

Cakkafracle said @ 12:53am GMT on 20th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
you MUST give me your Doctor's phone number!

atter_cob said @ 2:05am GMT on 20th Jul
So that will slow the spammers down by 18% for 3 days while they acquire another bot net?

damnit said @ 7:34am GMT on 20th Jul
Pawn Wars Prank Call

damnit said @ 7:34am GMT on 20th Jul
Pawn stars

gunthar said @ 8:00am GMT on 20th Jul [Score:2 Underrated]
YOU WANT GRUM? HERE'S SOME GRUM!

hellboy said @ 9:06am GMT on 20th Jul
I'm baffled by spam. The spam I get (that is, the stuff that shows up in my spam inbox or occasionally manages to slip past the filters) is, as cb361 says, incoherent or completely illegible. If I *wanted* to waste money on penis-enlarging pills or whatever, I wouldn't have the faintest idea where to send it. So how the fuck does anyone make money off sending this stuff out? Even the occasional piece of old-school spam or scam spam that manages to find the occasional sucker who's been in a coma since 1985 and just woke up to discover the internet can't possibly be much of an industry, can it? So why is there SO MUCH SPAM? Is it all cyberterrorism? Or am I missing something? WTF?

Spleen23 said @ 9:42pm GMT on 20th Jul
Middle managment.

It dosen't matter how ineffective it is, spam is cheap and it looks like the guy who is makeing it happen is doing something to earn his paycheck.

cyrano said @ 3:40pm GMT on 22nd Jul
Don't understand business and don't understand spam. Got it.

HeadCook said @ 12:14pm GMT on 20th Jul
Damn. Where am I gonna get my Viagra now?