(off list)
--On Friday, November 16, 2007 6:16 PM -0500 Hector Santos
<hsantos(_at_)santronics(_dot_)com> wrote:
Spammers get more credit than they deserve.
The majority are small organization snake-oil sales people
dealing in a very small margin/high volume business model.
They don't wish to waste expense on any R&D SMTP cracking
team. They use free ware, brain-dead bulk mailers, scripts
engines, some of which are ironically written by career IETF
participants. The better ones might get specialized bulk
mailer/statistic software, but overall, their best offense is
no offense - do nothing - work in legacy mode and/or compliant
with the expectations.
Hector, based on a semi-private FBI briefing two weeks ago, the
vast majority of spammers in the phishing, stock fraud, and
related businesses are not amateurs or snake-oil sales people,
but very sophisticated and organized criminals. One can, of
course, debate the fraction of total spam the phishers and stock
fraud perpetrators represent (it is a large majority of what I'm
seeing these days, but I may not be normal), but the days of
spamming as a completely amateur activity seem to be waning
quickly.
john