Real-Time Spam Outbreak Statistics

Following my previous posts on "Real-Time PC Zombie Statistics", and "Email Spam Harvesting Statistics", you may also find WatchGuard's recently released real-time spam outbreak statistics entertaining :

"Once in a while as I'm getting flooded with some particularly repititious spam bomb, I wonder whether other networks are receiving the same dumb stuff. And occasionally, I wonder where it originated from.

Both questions are readily answered with a nifty Web utility provided by the CommTouch Detection Center. [Full disclosure: WatchGuard's spamBlocker product is powered by a license with CommTouch.] The utility shows a map of the world, with red spots indicating the approximate location of new spam outbreaks. If you hover your cursor over any of the red zones, a popup box shows the subject lines of the most recently detected spam. It's an easy, instant way to verify whether an email you received is part of a spampaign."

Naturally, the stats are only limited to the vendor's sensor network worldwide, whereas you still get the chance to feel the dynamics of spam outbreaks worldwide. I often speculate -- and got the case studies proving it -- that the more pressure is put on spammers, phishers and malware authors, the higher would their consolidation become. For the time being, spammers are mostly utilizing the cost-effective one-to-many communication model, and their ROI -- where the investment is in renting infected zombie PCs -- is positive by default without them even segmenting, targeting and actually reaching the most gullible audience. If spammers change this model, it would mean a much faster email services worldwide, but for the time being, number of messages sent compared to basic marketing practices seems to be the benchmark.

Spammers got the "contact points", malware authors the platform and the payload, and phishers the social engineering "know-how", I find spammers missing so badly these days -- the trade off for delivering the spam through content obfuscation is the quality of the message itself. Trouble is, they'll soon realize that marriage is better than the divorce and unite forces given the pressure.

UPDATE: "Bot nets likely behind jump in spam" discusses the consolidation, or the possibility for services on demand. Via Sunbelt's blog.