New spam botnet leaves Storm for dead

Stephen Withers
Friday, 01 February 2008 11:37

Business IT - Security

Storm's place as the leading spam generator has been taken by Mega-D, a botnet currently being used to peddle 'male enhancement' pills.

According to content security vendor Marshal, Mega-D currently accounts for 32 percent of all spam in circulation.

At its peak, Storm was only responsible for 20 percent of the world's spam, and is now running at around one-tenth of that.

"It is hard to say with any degree of certainty why the Storm botnet has declined," said Bradley Anstis, Marshal's vice president of products. "Just two weeks ago we saw a renewed campaign to distribute the Storm malware under the guise of a love letter.

"Perhaps Storm has become a victim of its own success as Microsoft has been targeting Storm with its Malicious Software Removal Tool since September last year," he added. "Microsoft claims they have cleaned approximately 200,000 computers per month since then. If that is accurate, it must be a key reason for the decline of Storm."

According to Marshal, more than 70 percent of spam is generated by five botnets.