Spam Jumped 450% in 2 Months

The conclusion comes after the volume of spammed emails has surged increasing no less than 450% in just two months. And while there is no clear evidence connecting bot nets to the increase in spam activity, SecurityFocus is pointing out that networks of compromised machines are the principal suspect.

"Estimates of the magnitude of the increase in junk e-mail vary, but experts agree that an uncommon surge in spam is occurring. On the low side, Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus, has found that average spam volume has increased almost 30 percent for its 35,000 clients in the last two months," revealed Robert Lemos from SecurityFocus.

"It's pretty easy, once you start breaking out the numbers, to tell a bot net from a run-of-the-mill spam server," Greg Kras, vice president of products for Sunbelt. "Honestly, I think the increase is an attempt to keep viability by the corporations that are doing spam," Kras said. "It used to be that 1 in 1,000 was a good success rate for a spam run. Now, it is more likely 1 in 100,000."

Total Quality Management Cubed has reported a 450% increase in spam in just two months. Sunbelt Software has also announced that the volume of filtered spam has tripled compared to six months ago.

"What is most alarming is that new clients--Internet addresses that we have never seen before and which could be new infections--have tripled since June," said David Hart, the administrator for Total Quality Management.