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Rustock Botnet Returns, Levels of TLS Encrypted Spam Surge
Written by Save the Mail!   
Tuesday, 30 March 2010 00:44
The Rustock botnet, one of the bots that was “squashed” in the McColo shut down in early ’09 is back and spewing unprecedented levels of TLS encrypted spam. According to a Symantec intelligence report TLS encrypted spam comprised 30% of all spam email during the week of March 15th, and 70% of all spam mail sent by Rustock botnets.

The problem: TLS encrypted mail requires more processing power & storage space than non-TLS traffic.

The result: a greater degree of strain on your mail server.

Why spammers are doing it: It’s another way to evade law enforcement, TLS makes interception and subsequent infiltration of a botnet more difficult.

How to protect yourself:

1.     Make sure your anti-spam system is not configured to automatically accept TLS encrypted messages (although most don’t, some have in the past)

2.     Make sure you have a system in place to offload unnecessary mail traffic from your mail server (e.g. an email protection appliance that sits in front of your mail server or a hosted email protection solutions that processes the bulk of messages in the cloud).
Last Updated on Wednesday, 07 April 2010 19:04
 

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