Most Spam Comes From Just Six Botnets

Ezhenito noted some research pointing out the (maybe) surprising bit of research that 6 botnets are responsible for 85 percent of the world's spam. That seems a bit high to me, but the only aspect of spam I am an expert in is *getting* it.

Who needs 6?

[elrous0]

Bet I could connect any one of these bots to Kevin Bacon in 3 or less.

Distributed projects

[sakdoctor]

Srizbi is the largest contributor at 39%
I believe this figure could be much larger if the Trojan.Srizbi client was ported to Mac and linux
Anyone know what licence it's distributed under?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a way to block these specific botnets!?

Yes. Unplug your computer. Or require every person who is stupid enough to run porn.exe that they found on some website to immediately jump off a cliff carrying their computer with them.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Hmm

[Himring]

Hi,

microsoft is fixing spam just like they fixed viruses.

ty

Re:Distributed projects

[d3m0nCr4t]

Webmaster404, meet sarcasm [wikipedia.org] and irony [wikipedia.org].

Re:Who needs 6?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only takes one. I can't count the number of times I've received spam that tries to get me to "3nl4rge my K3v1n B4c0n".

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I did that in good faith but now I can't logon to the system. How do I get control of my system again? I host at a facility in Texas and I'm in London so I can't physically get access and part of me fears that I might've just fallen foul to a cruel and callous internet joke.

Re:Distributed projects

[cleatsupkeep]

404 Error: Sarcasm, Irony: Not Found

Hmm, well that explains a lot.

You have overlooked a more permanent solution.

[Dimensio]

While it may be difficult to terminate entire networks and IP address ranges, a more effective solution would be to identify the individuals who are directly responsible for sending unsolicited just e-mail through "botnets" and the individuals who are responsible for providing access to these illegally hijacked "botnets" and then kill them. Such an action would be most effective if done brutally and painfully, through acts of torture, with videos and images of the events and the aftermath released to the public as a warning to others who might engage in the same behaviour.

Re:Hmm

[Kamokazi]

The second option sounds a lot easier.

Re:Anti-bots?

[AeroIllini]

I was wondering whether it would help if Google (and maybe some of the other top 10) notified you when you showed up on one of the IP block lists with a big yellow box at the top of the page, like an IE alert: "Warning: Your computer has been reported to be a SPAM relay! Please clean up your computer with the following tools..."

Yeah, it would be just like those Windows dialog box advertisements that jump around and say "Your computer is infected with a VIRUS! Click OK to run our FREE VIRUS REMOVAL SOFTWARE!" I always trust any random box that jumps up in front of me. There's no way that I, being a totally botnet'd infected Windows MSIE user, would simply be numb to the sheer number of popups and messages my computer throws at me every day. I read each and every one and carefully consider what it has to say before clicking the close button.

Re:Hmm

[holyspidoo]

Bill Gates: No one is ever going to need more than 6 botnets.

Re:Hmm

[Guido del Confuso]

You're going to have to reboot the system to reset that, as has been mentioned. However, there's an easy way to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Once your system is up and running, log in (as root) and type "rm -rf /"

Doing this will prevent any sort of malicious command from being run in the future.