McAfee: Two Botnets Behind 97 Percent Of All Spam In Q4

Two botnets accounted for 97 percent of all spam sent in the fourth quarter of last year, according to McAfee in a new report. These are the Necurs and Gamut botnets, which are rented by spammers for sending spam, phishing emails and malware.

Necurs was the most used with a share of 60 percent, followed by Gamut with 37 percent ( pdf ). According to McAfee, Necurs is currently the largest spambot network in the world. The contaminated machines that are part of the botnet are controlled via a peer-to-peer model. In the fourth quarter of last year, the Locky ransomware and Dridex bank malware were sent via Necurs, among other things. Gamut focused more on e-mails during this period to recruit money mules and phishing e-mails.