Spam levels drop in US and western Europe

Efforts by security researchers and law enforcement agencies have helped to drive down spam levels in the US and western Europe.

Security firm Kaspersky said in its Spam report: December 2010 that spam levels in the UK accounted for just 4.3 per cent of the global share in December.

Italian systems sent 4.8 per cent of all spam, and systems in France claimed a 2.2 per cent global share. India claimed the top spot with 9.9 per cent of all spam messages, followed by Russia with 8.5 per cent.

The results showed a sharp decline for the UK in malware-laden emails. Kaspersky researcher Maria Namestnikova noted that as recently as October the UK had the third highest tally of spam messages containing malware, only to fall to 10th place in December with a 2.93 per cent share.

Much of the drop was credited to recent law enforcement efforts, most notably the arrest in November of Russian programmer Oleg Nikolaenko who is believed to be the owner of the Mega-D botnet.

Mega-D contributed to as much as 35 per cent of all spam at its height, and Kaspersky believes that the arrest helped to drop Mega-D's spam level to just under five per cent.

"The volume of spam distributed from the territory of the US has not returned to former levels in spite of concerns by experts that it would be a temporary dip," said Namestnikova.

"The amount of spam originating from the UK, France and Germany has also started to drop."

Other operations arose in the botnet's place, however, and Kaspersky reported spam levels rising by 0.3 per cent on the month.

Among the new trends were spam operations targeting the WikiLeaks drama. Kaspersky was unsure whether the spam messages were being sent by WikiLeaks supporters or opponents.

Spam messages connected to the holiday season were also popular in December, accounting for as much as 25 per cent of the monthly total.