Russian Spammer Behind Bars - Is that a Breakthrough?

The brain behind the Bredolab botnet, Georgiy Avanesov, is jailed, being sentenced to four years for his stint with cybercrime.

A botnet is a network of compromised machines that can be used to run malicious software to carry out tasks without the knowledge of the owners of the hijacked machines.

Here are some of the Bredolab facts:

1. Year of establishment: 2009
2. Year of start of crackdown by Dutch police:2010
3. Age of creator: 20’s
4. Estimated number of PC’s hijacked: 30 million
5. Estimated number of junk mail sent out daily: 3 billion
6. Revenue generated through malicious activities: Over $125,000
7. Tactics used: Emails with links to download malicious software; Fake advertisements to catch viruses

Time and again, there have been purported breakthroughs in the fight against spam, much of which relies on the use of email that is interpreted as junk.

Is the scene changing in this crazy cat and mouse game played by spammers? Certainly not! New users are being added every day – take the example of a developing country like India; out of a population of more than a billion, just over a 100 million use the Internet. That number is growing, and many of the users are said to be inactive. I’m pretty sure both the barely active and the new users will continue to be an easy target for a thriving cybercriminal community.

And, shouldn't we give a thought to the four year sentence given to the young spam leader? Don’t we need a stronger deterrent to stop budding cybercriminals in their quests?