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Re: [Asrg] Re: 3. Proof-of-work analysis

2004-05-24 09:35:28

On Mon, 24 May 2004, Richard Clayton wrote:

So current use of zombies is primarily based on the notion that you can 
send 10,000 - 100,000 emails from that zombie pc in only few minutes and 
then move on to another computer 

some spammers send considerably less and considerably more slowly. Their
mental model seems to be that this reduces their risk of detection.

Since they don't write academic papers about their tactics, it is hard
to assess or critique their analysis :(

Well, we can look at the some released numbers, lets just take latest article
to appear on CNET on this topic (read it yourself its good article and based 
on interviews with John Levine, Brian Martin, etc):
http://news.com.com/Attack+of+Comcast%27s+Internet+zombies/2010-1034_3-5218178.html
"Attack of Comcast's Internet zombies
 May 24, 2004, 4:00 AM PT 
 By Declan McCullagh 

Comcast's high-speed Internet subscribers have long been rumored to be an 
unusually persistent source of junk e-mail. 

Now someone from Comcast is confirming it. 'We're the biggest spammer on 
the Internet,' network engineer Sean Lutner said at a meeting of an 
antispam working group in Washington, D.C., last week. 

Lutner said Comcast users send out about 800 million messages a day, but a 
mere 100 million flow through the company's official servers. Almost all 
of the remaining 700 million represent spam erupting from so-called zombie 
computers--a breathtaking figure that adds up to six or seven spam-o-grams 
for each American family every day. 
...
Brian Martin, a computer security consultant in Denver, experienced 
Comcast zombies firsthand. Last year, a Comcast subscriber apparently 
infected by zombieware disgorged approximately 10,000 e-mail messages an 
hour to Martin's e-mail address
..."


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