After the destruction of Rustock, the Russian botnet Bagle took the lead

After covering Rustock by Microsoft and law enforcement, the amount of spam on the Internet decreased by 33.6%. In the first half of March, Rustock sent 13.82 billion spam letters every day, and at the peak of its activity at the end of last year, it generated 47.5% of all spam on the Internet.

Now Rustock is closed, but a holy place is never empty.

The leaders were again an old acquaintance Bagle, who became very active recently. This botnet was visible in 2009, but last year it did not even enter the top ten most active.
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The Bagle network is relatively small (from 180,000 to 280,000 infected PCs), but it is the most active (176 spam messages per bot per minute - specializes in pharmaceuticals). About 22% of all Bagle computers are geographically located in Russia, which suggests the Russian origin of its owners.

Thanks to Bagle, Russia is again at the top of the list of countries sending spam through botnets. It accounts for 12.4%, followed by India (8.8%) and Brazil (5.9%).

Source: MessageLabs Intelligence Report for March 2011 ( PDF ).