Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications
    • Cloud
    • Cybersecurity

    Largest Canadian Pharmacy Spammer Spamit Shuts Down

    By
    Fahmida Y. Rashid
    -
    October 6, 2010
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      In a rare bit of good news in the effort to reduce the relentless volume of junk e-mail, Spamit has closed its doors, dramatically decreasing global spam volumes, wrote a researcher on Cisco Systems security blog.

      “We don’t often hear about spam getting better,” IronPort Systems Senior Security Researcher Henry Stern said in a phone call to eWEEK. “A spammer shut down voluntarily. They decided they were done.”

      Spamit was the largest fake pharmacy affiliate program bombarding users over the years with spam advertising pharmaceutical products from Canada, but it has been recently declining, Stern said.

      The “Canadian Pharmacy” Websites sell prescription drugs without requiring a prescription. While there are thousands of these sites online, experts say most of the drugs shipped to customers are exported from India and China.

      “The affiliate programs serve the spammers by designing Website templates, operating hidden back-end order fulfillment servers, processing credit card payments, [and] shipping and tracking the physical goods,” Stern wrote. The programs “ultimately [pay] a substantial commission to the spammer” out of their revenues.

      Since Oct. 4, Stern said, there has been “no sign of spam advertising ‘Canadian Pharmacy’ and our SenderBase and SpamCop services are both showing a [20 percent] decrease in global spam volumes.”

      Independent security researcher Brian Krebs wrote recently about Spamit administrators threatening to shut down operations at the end of September, because it was receiving increased “negative” public attention.

      Stern said he didn’t think Spamit was facing any direct police action yet, but thought the affiliate program wanted to disappear before the publicity turned into a legal problem.

      While Stern was “really glad to see them go,” he was angry that it’s “a crime they don’t have to answer for. They are basically getting away with it,” he said to eWEEK.

      In a Sept. 10 blog post, Stern wrote:

      ““Dmitry Samosseiko, senior manager of SophosLabs Canada, wrote last year in his excellent Partnerka paper (PDF) that Spamit affiliates are thought to be responsible for managing some of the world’s most disruptive, infectious and sophisticated collections of hacked PCs or “botnets,” including Storm, Waledec and potentially Conficker.”“

      Cisco Security Intelligence Operations proved “Spamit was providing more than just fulfillment services for its affiliates” and was actively spamming users via the Storm botnet through 2007 and 2008, Stern wrote in the Oct. 5 post.

      Fake pharmacy pills remain a lucrative scam for affiliate programs. There was a good market for counterfeit drugs in regions where drugs like Viagra are taboo, Stern said. Since customers placing orders were actually getting pills, business was going well.

      In the Oct. 5 post, Stern described how he and other Cisco researchers placed orders with My Canadian Pharmacy, a site run by Spamit competitor Bulker.biz, to see what resulted. In response to the first order they received a pack of “eight anonymous blue pills” that turned out to be plain tablets containing no pharmaceutical or controlled substances. The second order, placed “a few months later,” produced a pack of pills that chemically contained the same compounds as Pfizer’s Viagra, which Stern said indicated the affiliate had switched suppliers.

      Spam volumes leveled off and have been holding steady for the past 18 months, according to Stern. This is a result of various legal actions shutting down botnets and administrators becoming savvier about implementing technology that detects and rejects spam. With spam traffic not increasing, the closure of a program as large and active as Spamit had a significant impact on total volume.

      “It almost seems too good to be true that Spamit would voluntarily cease its operation and one can’t help but wonder if the tales of its demise are greatly exaggerated,” Stern wrote.

      Avatar
      Fahmida Y. Rashid

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×