Spam attack
 

Our servers have come under a steady barrage of email spam over the last few months with a 35% increase or more in spam. In speaking with the network technicians where our servers are housed, they tell me this is true across the internet. Been keeping us busy blocking off IP's, changing rules, filters, etc just keeping up with it all.

We just caught what we think is a mail bot, or zombie blasting us with spam from russia taking over 200 connections at one time...

Anyone else seen an increase in spam to their mail servers in the last few months?

200 connections at one time??

This spammer couldnt be doing that to everyone.... sounds like hes targeting you specifically.

Obviously, he said his server has some zombie crap on it.

Zombies work by using other PC's around the globe as mail relays...obscuring their tracks and doing their dirty work for them.

A Zombie could have thousand, possibly millions of relays going on at any one time.....and 200 connections is not improbable at all.

From Wikipedia

"Increasingly, spammers use networks of virus-infected PCs (zombies) to send their spam. Zombie networks are also known as Botnets. In June 2006, an estimated 80% of e-mail spam were sent by zombie PCs, an increase of 30% from the prior year. An estimated 55 billion e-mail spam were sent each day in June 2006, an increase of 20 billion per day from June 2005"

I guess my server techs were about right in the amount of spam increase.