MX Lab, http://www.mxlab.eu, noticed a significant drop in the spam level since 22 September 2010. The global numbers show us a decline of approx. 40% even during business days when spam levels are high.

As you can see on the graph, the decline started on 21st of  September 2010 and continued to drop on the 22nd of September.

We detected one major absentee in the spam messages: the Canadian Pharmacy. This kind of spam can be related to the botnet Rustock, believed to be operating from Ukraine or Russia, and the activity on this botnet has dropped from approx. 50 to 60% of the daily worldwide spam volume to 0%.

Another contribution in the spam decline can be assigned to the closure of Spamit.com as this could also have affected the botnet herders of Rustock as well.

Spamit.com was the affiliate program that has paid some of the world’s top spammers to promote pharmacy Web sites and announced to close the doors at the end of September.

The homepage of Spamit.com was replaced by the following announcement:

Dear partners and colleagues!

As we announced we turned off all shops and stoped to recieve traffic. Last week we payed more than 95% of all commissions. Stats will works till 10.10.2010. After that stats will be unavailable. Please take your money from us before this time!

Also please do not use our shop templates with other partner programs. All of them have their own templates.

Thanks again to all of you for the trust and support!

Screenshot of the current hompage:

Spamit.com was also responsible for sending drugs spam on behalf of the Canadian Pharmacy and it is quite often related with Glavmed.com in articles (more information).

Will this mean that we get less spam? No, probably not. It will take some time but we expect to see Rustock getting back to business or other botnets may fill in the gap.

Three other botnets, Grum, Letho and Pushdo, are gaining ground with the drop down of Rustock from 10% – 20% towards 20%  while the botnet Grum almost reaches 30% of the daily spam.

View full post on mxlab – all about anti virus and anti spam

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