85 billion spam emails a day sent in November - up 35%

It looks like the spam filters are working overtime to keep out all the junk:

Spam Volume Jumps 35% In November - InformationWeek

Quote:

Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters. "There's been a huge increase in spam volume," says David Mayer, a product manager at IronPort Systems, "from 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28. "The October-to-November increase is higher than any other month we've measured," Mayer says. Like other anti-spam vendors, IronPort puts the blame on a surge in botnet use, the increased use of image-based spam, and a rapid rise in the number of URLs registered by spammers. That combination, along with profit-driven innovation, has dramatically changed the spam landscape in 2006, said IronPort, which released its annual trend report earlier this week. But other trends are at work, says Mayer, including spammers picking up hacker techniques and applying them to the junk mail business. Spammers are using malware development tactics such as trying out new strains of spam in limited quantities to gauge how effective they are against filters, then sending out huge quantities only when they're sure a good number will slip through defenses. (continued)

Hello,

This coincides with the broad release of the Win32/Stration (also known as Win32/Warezov) worm, which is used to send spam.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky