Doug Mentohl wrote:
> on Nov 28 2006 00:28 Tim Smith wrote:
>
> > So, if spammer X forges innocent user Y's email in a message to Roy, and
> > it isn't caught by Spamassassin, Roy's software sends an unsolicited
> > message to Y. That's generally considered abuse, and is grounds for
> > blacklisting on many of the anti-spam lists.
>
> Well spotted, but Roy actually referred to just such a thing later on in
> the post. How would you advise Roy on closing up this loophole
>
> "Spammers will often identify themselves using E-mail addresses of real
> people, who are not truly themselves, thereby causing traffic from the
> BoxTrappers (if not abusive mail from the spam recipient) to be sent to
> genuine innocent people and businesses"
> By the way, what do you have to say about 90% of SPAM
> coming from Windows zombies?
That's not what the article says. The article says that 90% of all
email is unsolicited (SPAM). It does *not* say anything about 90% of
spam coming from Windows zombies.
The article does talk about some sort of "SpamThru" botnet and mentions
that researchers found that there are about 73,000 infected computers
that are part of this botnet. Sure that's a *LOT* of computers, but as
a percentage of the install base, it's not very much at all.
The "90% coming from Windows zombies" is higher than I would believe.
My gut feeling is that the actual number is closer to 60% or so. But
for the sake of argument let's assume that 90% is correct... given that
nearly every study/survey shows that Windows has about 90% of the
desktop PC market, it wouldn't be very surprising that 90% of spam
comes from 90% of the PC's out there.
It would be like saying that Ford has 10% of the automobile market. And
then criticising Ford because 10% of all auto emissions are caused by
Ford vehicles.
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