Malware spike sends local providers scrambling

PALMER — A sharp increase in spam traffic has sent the help desks at local telecoms scrambling.

“There has been a massive rise in something called malware, or malicious software designed to spread spam,” said Les Helfrich, support center Internet manager for Matanuska Telephone Association. “It’s like nothing we’ve seen before.”

The malware, he said, takes over a computer and uses it to send unsolicited advertising emails known as spam.

“All of a sudden your computer is starting to spit out spam and you don’t even know,” Helfrich said.

The spike has thrown email into disarray for a number of Valley customers. Some are getting blacklisted on various email servers. Some are having email blocked.

“What we’d like for them to do is give us a call. Sometimes it’s a problem of malware has taken over their machines and we’ll help them get that cleaned up,” Helfrich said. If a customer has been blacklisted, “sometimes it just takes 24 to 48 hours to get that block cleared up.”

The number to call at MTA is 745-6821.

Internet users experiencing problems who are not MTA customers should contact their service providers.

Asked how long the spam has been causing problems, Helfrich joked that it’s been a problem since 1996.

“This has been an ongoing battle for years,” he said. “And it’s only going to get worse. Right now we’re talking hundreds of millions of emails out there every day.”

He quoted statistics showing that 183 billion spam emails are sent every day worldwide. That amounts to 78 percent of the Internet’s email traffic. Pharmaceutical drugs are the most common thing advertised.

Spam is familiar to most email users. The messages originating from malware-infected computers in particular show up usually from someone the user knows, though Helfrich said those emails could also be being sent by someone who hacked into a computer and stole an email address they’re now using from somewhere else.

But this particular spike, which Helfrich said is global, affects Internet service providers everywhere and cropped up last week.

“We saw a spike in January and then we were fine and then all of a sudden here in August we’re seeing this huge spike,” Helfrich said.

The Frontiersman has not been immune to the problem. In response, alternate email addresses have been set up for people having trouble reaching us.

For news items it’s frontiersmannews@gmail.com.

For sports it’s frontiersmansports@gmail.com.

For advertising it’s frontiersmangraphics@gmail.com.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.