Spam is up by 200%. Rustock botnet revival to blame.

Two weeks ago we wrote about a significant drop in spam volumes caused by the shutdown of McColo hosting. There was no doubt that spam traffic will get back to its previous levels (if not higher) eventually. The question was — when?

Unfortunately, McColo made a brief comeback on November 15th, which gave enough time to Rustock botnet owners to reconfigure the botnet, resuming the control. It took them less than 10 days to put it back in the “business”. 

Starting yesterday, the amount of spam coming to our traps has gone up 3 times (a 200% increase) .

Here is an example of a spam campaign it spews. A typical “Canadian Pharamacy” spam brough to you by the “good” guys from GlavMed affiliate network.

The spam volumes haven’t got back to where they were previously, but I don’t think we’ll wait long before publishing an updated graph here.