Spam levels drop 30 per cent in January

Spam levels have plummeted nearly a third in the last week prompting speculation that criminals have lost control of a major botnet.

According to security company SoftScan, while spam levels remained constant during December, in the first week of January the figures dropped 30 per cent. The company believed that the cause of the decrease could be the result of a major botnet that has temporarily lost control of its clients.

The company discounted the recent earthquake in Taiwan that caused the internet to slow down across Asia and recent computer purchases over Christmas as reasons for the drop in spam.

Spam levels for December remained very high at 89.36 per cent and even at their lowest point on the 21st December spam accounted for 84.95 per cent of all email, according to the company's figures.

Despite the recent drop, Diego d'Ambra, chief technical officer of SoftScan said that wider action is needed to prevent spam grinding email to a halt.

"If spam distribution levels continue to rise at the rate we have seen over the past few months, then I believe that by the end of 2007 governments worldwide will be obliged to enforce international anti-spam laws for the sake of commerce," said d'Ambra.

He said it was critical that government and industry find a way to stop the growing army of botnets that distribute the vast majority of spam.

"Both law enforcement and educating users will help, but I'm not sure it will be enough and the industry needs to work together to find a way," he said.

Virus levels remained low in December accounting for only half a per cent of all email scanned by the company, despite an outbreak of the "Happy New Year" worm at the end of last month. The company expected that this will maintain a similar level throughout 2007.

"In 2007, virus writers will continue their stance to remain undetected for as long as possible to ensure enough machines are harvested to make it worth their while," said d'Ambra. "The longing for notoriety is a thing of the past, all virus writers want now is access to your computer. Years ago, if a machine became infected it was such an inconvenience to the user that even if they were not aware of the threats before, they quickly took steps to prevent anything from happening again."

He said that hundreds and thousand of machines are infected without their users' knowledge now. "It doesn't affect them directly, apart from perhaps the machine occasionally going slow, but that one machine in the right hands causes misery to thousands of others," he said.

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