Spam down, spam up, spam down ... time for a trip to Moscow.

In the world of spam, what goes down must come up. Two weeks after the shutdown of web hosting firm McColo, which saw a two-thirds drop in spam worldwide, spam numbers are creeping up again. Some 450,000 infected computers have been spotted trying to connect to the largest of the networks McColo hosted. McColo served as host to a number of "command and control" centres for botnets, networks of infected computers called bots that send spam and engage in other malicious activities. With the shutdown of McColo, these botnets have been left without a centralised command, and the botnets' owners will be on the hunt for new hosts and bandwidth. The bots will remain infected with the malware that recruited them, and may soon be recruited anew. In combination with the typical spam cycle that sees rises around the Christmas season, it would seem that the scourge of spam will return to its former strengths soon.
It's really like a cat and mouse game, isn't it?

BTW I'm on my way to Moscow for some interesting Kaspersky Lab meetings. This time possibly I'll have one day extra to see at least something more from Moscow compared to my last visits. Time flies, it's nearly about one year ago I joined the Kaspersky team. And I really enjoyed it so far! ;-)