M86 Security Labs has reported a recent spike in malicious spam since the beginning of August, when they observed a huge surge of malicious spam that far exceeds anything they have seen over the past two years, including prior to the SpamIt takedown last October. The majority of the malicious spam comes from the Cutwail botnet, although Festi and Asprox are among the other contributors.

This is an epic amount of malicious spam, says M86. After multiple recent botnet takedowns, cyber criminal groups remain resilient, clearly looking to build their botnets and distribute more fake antivirus programs in the process. It seems spammers have returned from a holiday break and are enthusiastically back to work.