Here’s an article from Information Week that comes with little surprise/fanfare. The top spam country in the world during August and September was (drum roll) the US at 21%. Second place goes to the runner up, China at 13%. I would like to think that this is a problem that could be fixed but, where there is money to made there is little incentive to jump in and fix the very real problem of spam.
Sophos attributed the widening lead of the U.S. in spam sending during the quarter to the widely spread Stration worm (aka Warezov). “The steady increase in the volume of spam seen traveling across the net is directly related to the enormous rise in Stration worm strains in recent months,” said Ron O’Brien, Sophos senior security analyst, in a statement. Stration arrives with an English-only message, and hijacks compromised machines to use as spam “zombies.”
Now Stration is only one of hundreds of email borne malware that can zombie-fy a computer. I would like to believe that this is a problem that anti-virus vendors can/should fix. However, they are only part of the equation. The real problem is the end user. I know, I can hear you all saying, “well d’uh” and you would be right. But, the reason that I bring this up is the other day I was embroiled in a discussion with a family friend that did not see the benefit of anti-virus software. I should point out that he had a Windows XP system without a firewall running that was attached to a highspeed internet connection. He was/is convinced that virus updates are far too slow and that his system would be infected anyway. So, that being said he avoided loading software. Not even ClamAV or AVG.
His computer began to have some strange behaviour. Performance began to degrade. People started to call and complain about email viruses that were originating from his email account. He dismissed the latter as a “spoofed” address.
Rather than lose my patience and head for the nearest bell tower it dawned on me, the sheer gravity of the virus/spam problem that we face now and more so, in the future. You might think I’m nuts to be surprised but, this is a smart man that had a long and successful business career. I would have hoped that he would know better. And what, you might ask, became of his home computer. The system that he paid $6000 for when he purchased it new LAST YEAR? Well, it was thrown out with the trash one morning. Had I any idea, I would have grabbed it up and taken it home. Sadly, it is now in a landfill somewhere.
As Ferris Bueller once said, “there’s a certain sense of freedom in knowing you’re totally fucked.”
…oh, he went out and bought a brand new system last week. I’m staking out his trash this time next year.
Tags: Virus, Spam, Malware, US Spam, Spam Nation
