Re: [At-Large] Cut 1 host from net - 2/3 reduction in spam worldwide

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:54:35 -0500, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote:

For those who may not have seen the reports, yesterday one web hosting service in California was largely cut off, resulting in an apparent 2/3 reduction in spam worldwide. No doubt they will relocate elsewhere quickly, but it is impressive nonetheless.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/11/spam_volumes_drop_by_23...

or do a Google News search for "McColo".

The drop was very limited in time apparently, mostly because these botnets have redundancy built-in. These spammers run businesses, they cannot afford downtime. For a fascinating explanation of how this works, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srizbi_botnet Patrick