At the beginning of May, I wrote that the Russian hosting service, PROXIEZ-NET – which was notoriously used by criminal gangs – was taken down by the authorities.
The result was a temporary decline in malware originating from Russia which suggested that this botnet was largely populated by systems in Russian itself though this might have been co-incidence.
However, as predicted, those figures are up to their usual levels again this month. Russia is once again one of the top four virus-producing countries, behind the US, Korea (South Korea in the main), and India.
The lesson from this is that, unfortunately, criminal gangs are not as easy to shut down as the hosting services they use.
Shutting down the site will inconvenience the criminals for a short period – but the financial gains to be made in criminal activity online are sufficient that they will find a way of getting back up and running.
Our analysis – which you can see here – also showed that the levels of spam and viruses coming from the UK are still high. In times of economic uncertainty, criminal activity naturally increases.
As ever, our advice to all internet users is to be cautious. If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Cross-posted from NetworkBox