Nice:
Good news for your email inbox: You’ll be seeing less spam in it now, thanks to a global takedown effort that knocked one of the world’s biggest spammers offline this week.
“About 50% of the worldwide spam is gone,” says FireEye senior scientist Atif Mushtaq, who participated in the demolition.
The dramatic decrease is the result of a coordinated attack by security firms and Internet service providers around the globe that took down a network of infected computers known as “the Grum botnet.” Grum, one of the world’s most prolific spammers, generated around 18 billion emails a day, by FireEye’s estimates.
The teaser headline was “One of world’s top spammers taken out,” and I got excited until I realized that didn’t mean he had been shot. Still, this is welcome.
Steeplejack
That’s pretty amazing. I get virtually no spam, I guess thanks to Outlook and/or Microsoft Security Essentials–not to mention my ascetic, retiring (cyber-)lifestyle–but I know it’s out there and that it’s a huge problem. Still shocking to see some actual numbers.
cathyx
That’s funny because it seems like I’ve been getting more spam than normal in by inbox. Maybe it’s just coming to my regular mailbox instead of spam box. That way it looks like less spam is coming.
kindness
Careful John, with comments like that you’ll start getting tea party supporters over here then the locals will start a Hatfield/McCoy feud. And you being a W. Virginian and all know what that’s about.
oogabooga
Add the internet to the long list of things Cole is incapable of understanding. Every few months they announce some big takedown of a spam network or malware network. They almost never catch the actual guys doing it and that wouldn’t really matter anyways. Only thing that happens is the activity drops for a few days but eventually it picks up again and often gets even worse.
I don’t see mention of them tracking down the actual people running this thing. So those guys are already hard at work starting up again and learning from their mistakes so they can’t be taken out again.
tech98
I can’t think of a better use of Predator drones and Hellfire missiles than to incinerate the data center polluting the earth with this vile crap every day.
Felanius Kootea
That’s good news. And I think you meant to write “…had been shot,” not “…had be shot.”
Cris (without an H)
Like this guy?
Bnut
@oogabooga:
Man, you are a prick. Take out that first sentence and you are being helpful in the discussion. Now you just sound like an asshole.
Ash Can
So does this mean M-80 won’t be getting any more messages regarding horse dongers? They were good for a few laughs, at least.
Linda Featheringill
Gee. I would’ve thought this would be controversy-free topic.
Nutella
oogabooga is derf’s new name. Pie him. I did.
Barry
“The teaser headline was “One of world’s top spammers taken out,” and I got excited until I realized that didn’t mean he had be shot. Still, this is welcome.”
No, pull a Clockwork Orange on them. Strap them into chairs, open their eyelids and dump spam on them until they actually liquify.
BGinCHI
From the headline I thought Cole was excited about a new flavor of Spam. I was guessing processed meat foods are big in WV.
Citizen_X
This are open thread? Good. Here’s something I thoroughly enjoyed, but which John and others may not: Alex Pareene giving a well-deserved caning to Aaron Sorkin. Yes, he put Sorkin on the Hack List.
burnspbesq
@tech98:
I can.
Yankee Stadium.
WaterGirl
@Bnut: He is an asshole. It’s derf.
I see Nutella beat me to it on the ID.
burnspbesq
Following up from one of last night’s open threads, no joy for the Six Nations. The US reversed its earlier loss to the Iroquois Nationals at the under-19 world lacrosse championships, winning the semifinal game 12-7. The US faces Canada in the championship game on Saturday, while the Iroquois will play England for third place.
dmsilev
Microsoft to go bankrupt in roughly two years:
maya
(Sniff), I’ll miss all those Canadian drug ads. Hotmail lets you ‘sweep’ spam, which means blocking the source. When you check the offending email the sweep/block gives the email address of the spammer. They all read something like; R5yu7opmm2@yahoodotcom. There’s probably quite a few of them. They just keep coming back with same come-on but different nonsense yahoo email address
Scott P.
In my naivete, I always wonder why anti-spam attacks focus on the servers. These bots send out advertisements. To make money off a product, you have to buy the product, store the product, and ship the product. You also have to have a way to take payment. It seems to me all of those would be easier targets.
NCSteve
I’ve long said that if the CIA would just track down a few of the assholes who write and release fake antivirus trojans (and who aren’t with the CIA) and just disappear their asses, it would either bring all that shit to an end, as word of the disappearance got around in the hacker chat rooms, or else they’d go berzerk bring the whole world to its knees within days.
JGabriel
COOL! Job opening!
.
gnomedad
But I don’t want any spam!
/ falsetto off
Mnemosyne
Weirdly, I’ve actually noticed a fairly big uptick in spam in one of my accounts the past couple of days. Someone new must be filling the hole in the marketplace.
muddy
@gnomedad: I’ve got a rat.
Hawes
Does this mean Socialism can make it through spam filters now?
NotMax
So the charge from my ISP will be going down?
/snowballs-chance-in-hell
Villago Delenda Est
Charles Stross’ Rule 34 has spammers as a central element to the plot.
At the point where the protagonists discover that some spammers are being hunted and killed, my first reaction was “and this is a problem why?”
JGabriel
__
__
Villago Delenda Est:
They say a great novel doesn’t answer questions, but raises them.
.
joel hanes
@gnomedad:
But I don’t want any spam!
How about a nice Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce, served in a Provençale manner with shallots and aubergines, garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and a fried egg on top and Spam ?
It’s not got much spam in it.