Researchers Take Down a Spam Botnet

The Register is reporting on the takedown of a botnet once responsible for 1/3 of the world's spam. The deed was done by researchers from the security firm FireEye, who detailed the action in a series of blog posts. PC World's coverage estimates that lately the botnet has accounted for 4% of spam. From the Register: "After carefully analyzing the machinations of the massive botnet, alternately known as Mega-D and Ozdok, the FireEye employees last week launched a coordinated blitz on dozens of its command and control channels. ... Almost immediately, the spam stopped, according to M86 Security blog. ... The body blow is good news to ISPs that are forced to choke on the torrent of spam sent out by the pesky botnet. But because many email servers already deployed blacklists that filtered emails sent from IP addresses known to be used by Ozdok, end users may not notice much of a change. ... With [the] head chopped off of Ozdok, more than 264,000 IP addresses were found reporting to sinkholes under FireEye's control..."

Comments

Re:Good!

[amicusNYCL]

Now I don't have to worry about throttled torrent downloads.

Uh right, problem solved there. In other news, once you get an oil change in your car you no longer have to rotate the tires.

Re:Wrong title, not 'taken down'

[RichardDeVries]

I agree, of course. However, I was pointing out that the claim the title makes is false. A spam botnet has been taken down when it is permanently disabled. (And the spammers themselves at the least publicly taunted by John Cleese, but that is my personal opinion).