Return of the mega botnet

According to Symantec, 64% of small businesses have seen a surge in the volume of spam received during the previous six months. And it isn’t the only one: whether you talk to ISPs or security vendors, gateway mail filtering services or end users, the message is the same. Spam is on the up, and how. The most worrying thing is the how rather than the why, the latter being the good old Yankee Dollar as always. In the past it was bulk-emailers that caused the spam damage, plain and simple, but now the trend is towards a higher level of sophistication. Behind the new wave of spam is the botnet.