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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Wanted: Owners of Rustock Botnet

A-Journey-to-the-Center-of-the-Rustock-B-Rootkit-Fig23

After some decent work done by Microsoft, FireEye (security company) and Pfizer, 96 command and control servers in the Rustock Botnet were taken down March 16th. However the owners of the botnet are still at large.

According to reports the Rustock Botnet was sending out about 30 billion spam messages a day at it’s peak and according to the security firm over at FireEye it looks like the Botnet was being headed by a only a handful of people.

Since the takedown global spam levels have noticeably dropped and continue to remain low.

In case you don’t know what a Botnet is here’s a VERY simple explanation. A Botnet is a system set up to hijack other peoples computers by installing software that automatically runs in the background. The software does things like create email addresses and send out messages. Without the user knowing.  A Botnet can use a compromised computers resources, something known as “scrumping” to gain more power and propagate itself throughout other machines.

Check the link for a more in-depth article on Afterdawn.com

Source: Rustock botnet spammers sought following takedown

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