Microsoft helps take down spam behemoth Rustock

Microsoft helps take down spam behemoth Rustock
Microsoft and federal law enforcement have jointly taken down the spam giant Rustock botnet, seizing computers, servers, and other equipment from hosting providers in Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, Seattle, Scranton, Pa., and Columbus.

The devices were allegedly "command-and-control" machines, from where operators of the botnet controlled over one million infected PCs, globally.



Microsoft called the seizures a "decapitation" of the botnet, which was sending out as much as 30 billion spam emails every day.

The raids were part of a civil lawsuit filed by Microsoft last month against John Does 1-11, the unidentified operators of the botnet.

Hotmail, Microsoft's email service, is "taxed" by the huge amount of spam, says the software company, and Windows and Office users are hurt because the spammers usually exploit security vulnerabilities in Office or Windows to infect and take control of computers.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Mar 2011 0:47
Tags
Microsoft botnet Spam Rustock
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  • 3 comments
  • tombennet

    I did not know that this spam company existed.

    20.3.2011 03:37 #1

  • SomeBozo

    Well isn't Microsoft also to blame for some of this too? I'm trying to blindly or broadly condemn Microsoft as a knee jerk reaction, but more from the perspective that Microsoft will install crap on people machine which they don't want or have any control to not install the crap. An example from reading an article a month or two back on Afterdawn here, the CEO of Firefox or Mozilla was complaining about Microsoft Office installing add-on into Firefox without users having an option. Mainly as i think it was causing problems with Firefox, second users had no control, and thirdly I would argue it opens up security wholes within Firefox. Other examples, while I'll agree Microsoft has stepped up security, worms like MIMDA or Slammer were exploits Microsoft exposed vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit yet i would think 90% of the users that did get effected had no clue SQL's MSDE was open for hackers to take over your machine bye...

    20.3.2011 03:55 #2

  • dbminter

    Originally posted by SomeBozo: I'm trying to blindly or broadly condemn Microsoft as a knee jerk reaction
    You are trying to blindly blame or not? ;)

    25.3.2011 16:52 #3

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