Friday, July 27, 2012
One of the biggest culprits of Internet spam has been shutdown by a coordinated international effort. But the victory may be fleeting, due to other troublemakers still in operation.
Grum, a botnet (a collection of security-compromised computers) that was regularly delivering 18% of the world’s email spam, was knocked out after security companies and Internet Service Providers in Panama, the Ukraine and Russia got together and shut down Grum’s servers.
The botnet was at one time responsible for 33% of the spam clogging inboxes around the globe.
The fact that Grum had declined to 18% means other botnets, namely Lethic and Curtwail, were picking up the slack, delivering get-rich-quick schemes, male enhancement offers and other unsolicited messages.
It’s also not assured that Grum won’t come back to life. Lethic was shut down in 2010, only to rise again later that year.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Spam Botnets Get SmackDown from Internet Security Experts (by Jack B. Winn, OhMyGov)
Grum, World's Third-Largest Botnet, Knocked Down (by Atif Mushtaq, FireEye Malware Intelligence Lab)
Killing the Beast—Part I (by Atif Mushtaq, FireEye Malware Intelligence Lab)
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