Antispam community sites that help combat phishing scams and spam are being targeted with denial of service attacks by malware botnets presumably operated by spammers. The trend was reported last week by antispam site SpamNation.

SpamNation believes that the denial of service attacks are being launched by the Zhelatin gang, the same group that is thought to be behind the rapidly growing Storm worm botnet. According to SpamNation, the botnet operators are selling denial of service attacks. “When the firehose of the Zhelatin botnet gets turned on your site, it doesn’t mean that it’s the gang themselves who have singled you out for attack,” says SpamNation. “It’s more likely that the attack has been commissioned by one of their customers. In the same way that a customer can order a stock spam run, they can request a DDoS attack.”

Sites that have been targeted include 419Eater, ScamWarners, CastleCops, scam.com, scamfraudalert.com, and Artists against 419.

CastleCops, which is currently back up, has established a denial of service forum to provide information about the ongoing attacks and facilitate discussion. System administrators are also sharing blacklists of IP addresses and netblocks that represent botnet zombie systems.