There doesn't appear to be any evidence of that being the case. Rustock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rustock_botnet) appears to be responsible for the bulk of the drop in volume, but several others smaller botnets have fallen silent too. There haven't been any reports of it being used for anything other than spam and isolated ddos attacks (http://www.joestewart.org/rustock-ddos.html) in it's 4 year history. It is a bit of a mystery as to what is going on, but my bet would be it'll resume with a new approach or upgrade, rather than a complete re-purposing.

maybe it was repurposed for Operation Payback?

What people don't like to admit about spam, is that it created value for somebody. This is why some people clicked on the ads and why others profited.

SEO Spam creates value. Unfortunately, it also degrades value for a great many others. There is opportunity here. Google or some other search engine needs to figure out how to capture the value in SEO spam. (Perhaps by finding a way to identify "original pages" like those on StackOverflow and then act to enforce their terms of service?)

You could use the same logic to justify many crimes. And spam is more than annoying, it wastes time and energy. A lot of energy: 33 Terawatt-hour in 2008 alone, acording to McAffee. See: http://img.en25.com/Web/McAfee/CarbonFootprint_12pg_web_REV_...

I'm not advocating SEO Spam. I'm pointing out that we should be able to exploit these exploiters in turn.

> What people don't like to admit about spam, is that it created value for somebody. This is why some people clicked on the ads and why others profited.

By this same logic, you can justify the heroin trade, the slave trade, and the child pornography trade.

Why is everyone umping to the conclusion that I'm justifying SEO spam? I'm only saying it creates value. (While destroying some for others.) This means that it can be co-opted.

Yaye for libertarianism! Oh wait, these things are a net-negative for society and those involved. Never mind, argument is null.

Obvious trolling, but the slave trade and child pornography probably wouldn't be down with most libertarian principles. The core I've seen from most libertarian folks is "Do what you want to yourself, but don't harm other people." Slavery and child pornography are fairly obviously harming others. Heroin is trickier.

Agreed

a) Not libertarian b) Not justifying SEO spam, but rather pointing out that there's an economic opportunity in disrupting it!

No, more like 'yay for anarchism!'

Can you do SEO more efficiently with a botnet than without one?

Very black hat SEO yes. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a distributed version of xrumer or other link spamming software.

how does that account for the sudden fall off?