My Predictions on McAfee's Global 'Spammed Persistently All Month' or S.P.A.M. Experiment

Don't get enough spam already and think you should get more? Then you will probably feel jealous of the 50 participants of McAfee's global Spammed Persistently All Month (S.P.A.M.) of April. These 50 regular Joe's ranging from 17 year old high school students (Hello Zach) to a mother of three (Zach's Mom Tracy) and a university student (Katya) among others in all areas of the globe are the guinea pigs in this experiment to run throughout April 2008.

Basically these participants have been given a dedicated laptop, a pre-paid credit card and a mission. Their mission is to do everything wrong and see what the results are. They are going to respond to Spam messages - buy the 'Genuine Replica Watches' on-line and sign up for everything they can and see what happens. William reported on Day 2 that without any protective software running he received 160 Spam messages and is getting pop-ups and browser hijacks 'on a regular basis'. The Blogs are a very interesting read.

Here Are My Predictions:

1. The laptops that these people are using will become a "willing soldier" in one of the Spam Bot armies lurking out there and may end up sending themselves (and us) more Spam. How is that for irony?

- Collectively the top botnets are capable of sending over 100 billion Spam messages per day*

2. Malware - The laptops will have to be wiped and re-installed for everyone at least once during the month. They are going to do this anyway for the participants at the end of the experiment before they get to keep them so this will be good practice. I'm not sure I would trust these laptops even after they are wiped though with the rootkits that are now being incorporated into the Bot software. Reports are coming in already that the laptops are slowing down and becoming unresponsive.

3. Massive consuption of time - the management of this Spam will take more and more time until these participants will not be able to do anything but read and reply to e-mail all day long.

4. Cyber Crime - all the participants have been given 'new identities' just like someone in the witness protection program to use online. I predict that some of these identities will be sold on the black market and thus stolen.

McAfee is of course going to use this experiment to advertise that there is a lot of Spam out there and that you need protection but I could have told you that - just look at the CudaMail statistics page. ;)

- Shaun

* Source: www.secureworks.com/research/threats/topbotnets/?threat=topbotnets

For More Information:

www.mcafeespamexperiment.com
www.echannelline.com/canada/printer.cfm?item=DLY040708-2