Linux Machines are Spammers
Symantec Labs completed a research about the use of botnets and the origins of spammer machines and the results, as unexpected as it sounds, the great majority of machines available in the world working as botnets are using Linux operating system.
Here are some of the facts shown in this report:
- 87% of spam analyzed came from botnets.
- Linux only used 36% of botnets to send spam.
- English language spam is the most used.
- Portuguese spam appeared as the second most used with 6%, large differences with other languages.
- The most common spam is the pharmaceutical spam. You know, Viagra stuff and that kind of thing.
Here’s a little sample about those pharmaceutical spam:
As part of this investigation, the analysis found that most of these machines are running also an open source mail transfer agent like Postfix or SendMail, which they’ve been configured to open up all the necessary ports, making those servers an easy target for hackers.
Most organizations use these kinds of “free” platforms to control their mail infrastructure and do not realize the big security concerns involved on each of them if those are not configured correctly.
