[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:24:22 +1200, Nick FitzGerald said: >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >>> The sad part is that somebody *without* much of an operation was making >>> $15K/week. >> Maybe, but profit or turnover? > > If you're a spammer, your major expenses are probably bandwidth and legal. > If you're paying anywhere near that much per week for either of those, you > have some *major* problems... > > If he was using a botnet and wasn't collecting the vast majority of that > $10-15K as profit, he needs to be forcibly removed from the gene pool.
Valdis, I believe the figures he quoted for one particular pharma spam 'campaign' were along the lines of: 40 million spams emails sent 0.12% click through rate = 48,000 click throughs Click through to sale ratio 1/200 Total sales = 240 Total sales revenue = $37,440 Spammer commission rate = 50% Total spammer income = $18,720 Running costs: 4 day botnet rental $6,800 Buying email addresses $4,000 Bullet proof hosting $230 Total running costs $11,030 Net profit $7,690 Assuming he doesn't pay taxes, that is about a 20% margin on the total scheme turnover for the spammer, for 2-3 hours of real work. The rough overall money distribution for the entire scam was: Pharma-scam owner $18,720 Spammer $7,690 Botnet master $6,800 Address collector $4,000 Bulletproof hoster $230 So it is the scam owners who made the most money, with the spammer and botmaster splitting roughly the same amount (although each probably works with multiple 'clients' like the pharma scam owner). Thanks, David -- David Watson UK Honeynet Project www.ukhoneynet.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
