Spam Nation summary

The spam industry is a highly efficient and profitable machine, run by only a handful of experienced cybercriminals, often with a background in other criminal activities.

So who are these people and how do they operate?

The amount of spam in daily circulation is mind-boggling. However, this flood can be traced back to just a small gang of dedicated spammers. Armed with huge networks of hacked computers, these few cybercriminals provide the firepower of the spam industry.

But who exactly are these spammers?

If you suffer from a serious disease, managing expensive medications can add to the stress. Yet imagine the relief you might feel if one day, you received an email offering you a version of your medication for a fraction of the original cost.

Wouldn’t you be tempted to accept the offer? If so, you’re certainly not alone.

As the rogue pharma business grew, spam kingpins Igor Gusev and Pavel Vrublevsky became richer.

Yet their growing wealth and power was accompanied by paranoia and distrust. Very soon the two spammers began to loathe one another, eventually leading to a serious fallout.

In the spam wars, there are good guys and bad guys. The good guys are anti-spam activists, or “antis,” who work to curb cybercriminals and their activities – often at risk to themselves personally.

Anti-spam start-up Blue Security came up with ingenious ways to shut down spammers, but their campaign came at a high price.

While we might expect the government to coordinate the fight against spam and cybercrime, private companies also have an important role to play. Some are even leading successful efforts.

Credit card companies, for example, have made serious changes to general protocols as a means of protecting themselves and their customers against cybercrime.

Spammers and their kin always seem one step ahead of the law. To be sure, cybercriminals never rest, and no one is safe.

The efforts of companies like Microsoft and various law enforcement agencies have made it much more difficult for cybercrime partnerships to access credit card processing through payment services such as ChronoPay. These tighter regulations have effectively killed the fake anti-virus software industry. Yet in this void, a new threat has emerged: ransomware.