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Spam increases to 'pre-McColo collapse' levels

Spam levels have increased to those experienced before the collapse of the McColo server in November 2008, a new report shows.

According to figures from Symantec, spam levels have risen by 4.9 per cent compared to December 2008.

Mega-D (OZdoc) botnet was responsible for delivering the highest level of spam this month, contributing to the increase of deliveries to 74.6 per cent.

More than 26 million spam emails per minute were sent by the Mega-D, while other active botnets included Xarvester, Donbot and Waledac.

Paul Wood, intelligence analyst at Symantec, said: "Whilst Waledac malware was spread at an alarming rate in January, it was dispersing spam in relatively small volumes.

"For now, the botnet controllers are clearly focusing on growing and developing this new botnet resource rather than using it to spam."

The report also found that 11.5 per cent of all web-based malware intercepted this month was new, while more than 1,000 websites per day were identified as having been infected with malware.

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