North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: The Geography of Spam
I should add that I meant to say it matches the fact we gets lots of spam from hijacked machines - not the 30% number. We have just been looking at a few machines, but would love to see or hear about anyone who has bigger datasets to work with. ----- Original Message ----- From: Brian Bruns <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, March 2, 2004 11:23 am Subject: Re: The Geography of Spam > > On Tuesday, March 02, 2004 11:11 AM [EST], [email protected] > <[email protected]>wrote: > > > Thought folks might find this blurb from Sophos on the geography > of Spam > > interesting. 30% of Spam, they report, comes from hijacked > PC's. Matches > > pretty close to what we see across our network - i.e. all sorts > of stuff > > from swbell.net > > > > o U.S. Routes More Spam than World Combined, Study Shows > > > > Paris -- Intentionally or not, the U.S. routes more spam e-mail > traffic> than the rest of the world combined, according to a new > study by > > anti-virus firm Sophos. The study concludes that most of the > unsolicited> junk e-mails originate in Russia and then passes > through hacked computers > > in the U.S. "More than 30% of the world's spam is sent from these > > compromised computers, underlining the need for a coordinated > approach to > > spam and viruses," said Charles Cousins, Sophos' Asia managing > director . > > The U.S. accounts for a whopping 56% of the global spam pie, > followed by > > Canada with 6.8%. Europe did not fair very well in the report > either, with > > the Netherlands (5th), Germany (7th), France (8th), the U.K. > (9th) and > > Spain (12th) all making the list. > > http://www.sophos.com/spaminfo/articles/dirtydozen.html > > I guess I can say, that I can somewhat agree with what they are > saying, but > the percentage seems to be a bit lower then what I would have > said. With the > recent round of viruses that seem to be designed to help spammers > hijack end > user machines, I'd say the percentage is more towards 45-50%. > Sometimes its > very hard to tell the difference between an open proxy, and a > drone running an > open proxy (take the AHBL's proxy list, which is over 410,000 > proxies listed, > and our infected/hijacked machine count comes nowhere near that). > > Part of the reason why alot of the spam comes from outside of the > US is > because US spammers need to hide their actual locations in order > to avoid > getting snared by CAN-SPAM and similar. This is why Ralsky bases > his spamming > campaigns out of China, where the laws are more relaxed in terms > of this > stuff, and is less likely to get yanked off of his net connection. > This is > also why spammers have 'fronts'. :-) > > > -- > Brian Bruns > The Summit Open Source Development Group > Open Solutions For A Closed World / Anti-Spam Resources > http://www.sosdg.org > > The Abusive Hosts Blocking List > http://www.ahbl.org > >
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