Botnets Capture MAAWG Attention

By Stephanie Jordan
in

Botnets continue to be a serious messaging threat. In September, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) devoted time to “focusing on the urgent problems of identifying and removing botnets.” MAAWG is the largest industry organization uniting ISPs, mailbox providers and vendors from around the world against online abuse.

The new and ongoing work to address botnets and other abuse issues from the MAAWG meeting held Sept. 22–24 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. included the formation of:

  • A botnet mitigation subcommittee that will develop best practices to safely remove malware from unsuspecting users’ computers
  • A subcommittee reviewing a novel method by which senders of solicited bulk email can detect that individual subscribers may have been infected by malware, and automatically report their suspicion to that subscriber’s ISP
  • An IPv6 and botnets subcommittee researching how IPv6 will impact botnet detection
  • A migrating to IPv6 subcommittee developing best practices for upgrading a messaging infrastructure
  • New working groups formed to address security issues in Web messaging and other outbound abuse

“Botnets are not just a consumer problem. Botnets exist on corporate networks just as they exist on the residential networks run by the ISPs,” says Michael O’Reirdan, MAAWG chairman. “Mitigation is exceedingly important in protecting end-users from abuse and in maintaining a trusted online environment. MAAWG is aggressively responding to this rapidly growing threat.”

While O’Reirdan notes that botnets are “a massive problem” he adds, “At the same time, we’re also continuing our day-to-day block and tackle work on authentication, feedback loops, abuse reporting and other topics. They are all weapons in our armory.”

Published November 4, 2008