I ran across this interesting article that came out a couple of weeks ago and wanted to give you my take on this. Botnets are serious problems that need to be addressed.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/17/spam_botnet_trends/
Synopsis:
5 botnets are responsible for most of the current spam campaigns. There are signs “that criminal hackers are building more resilient systems with better ‘disaster recovery’ features.” There’s “a new targeted email attack designed to seed agents of the Cutwail botnet on corporate systems.”
My Take:
Better, more sophisticated feedback loops to (and cooperation with) ISPs hosting bonnet-infected systems need to be developed, and maintained to keep a lid on bonnet activity as close to the source as possible. Cooperative techniques, such as what Sendmail is working on with our partners, will become even more needed by large corporations to protect their environment from highly targeted malware campaigns.