March 3, 2008 3:37 PM PST
Security Bites Podcast: Why spam isn't going away
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CNET's Robert Vamosi talks with Jose Nazario about spam-producing botnets.
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This week, CNET's Robert Vamosi talks with Jose Nazario, a senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, about the link between spam and botnets.
Recently, Symantec said in its February 2008 "State of Spam" report (PDF) that 78.5 percent of all e-mail is spam; they also said most of that is now coming from Europe. That's a change from previous reports that suggested North America was responsible.
But what the Symantec report doesn't explicitly state is that much of the European spam doesn't come from individuals sitting at their desks pumping out lists. Europe is one of the hotbeds for the Storm worm botnet, which is notorious for automatically co-opting its hosts into spam relays.
With the release of a Valentine's Day-themed spam barrage, Nazario says Storm has grown by as much as 50 percent in new infections within the last two weeks. "The fact that (Storm) is generating lots of money means that it's in (the creator's) interests to keep grooming it, keep growing it," he said.
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