Grum shutdown did not result in a spam break
The shutdown of the Grum botnet last week had little impact on international spam volumes. This comes to the conclusion eleven , German provider for e-mail security, in an investigation.

Rise instead of relief

The botnet Grum, which has existed since 2008, is said to be responsible for 17 to 18 percent of the spam sent worldwide. Two of his control servers were in the Netherlands, one in Russia, one in Panama. Now all four are switched off. However, the volume of unwanted digital mail has not decreased as a result.

The eleven research team has analyzed the amount of spam since the botnet was shut down. Instead of the one from the US provider FireEye  claimed decline, eleven even observed a partial increase. The spam volume for the entire week remained at the same level. "It actually increased significantly over the weekend, which is very unusual," says Krieger.

Viagra wave high

For the current calendar week 30, the amount of spam is heading for a new annual high. "The pharmaceutical-Viagra waves are classic, during which individual spikes of spam were observed in the previous week," says Krieger. Since this week, however, there has been more persistent spamming at a high level. Since Grum had "specialized" primarily in pharmaceutical spam, it was expected that the proportion of Viagra and Co. would decrease. Here, too, the opposite is the case.

Source: paste