Rustock Botnet Responsible For 40% of Spam

angry tapir writes "More than 40 percent of the world's spam is coming from a single network of computers that computer security experts continue to battle, according to new statistics from Symantec's MessageLabs' division. The Rustock botnet has shrunk since April, when about 2.5 million computers were infected with its malicious software that sent about 43 billion spam e-mails per day. Much of it is pharmaceutical spam."

Comments

Re:Pharmaceutical

[compro01]

My accounts have been getting more offers of narcotics than genital enlargement in the past few months. Also got a few spams selling antibiotics, which is a new one, and even more reprehensible if they're genuine.

You forgot your tinfoil hat.

[N0Man74]

Companies like Symantec and Norton didn't start off as antivirus companies. They build tools and utilities. If by some miracle all of the botnets, trojans, and virus infections were to vanish from the world, I imagine that they would go back to making tools. It was virus makers that created the market, not Symantec and Norton.

I suppose you think cancer researchers don't really want to find a cure, because then they'd lose their funding, right?

The fact that you are marked as insightful is baffling. You have a distorted sense of reality.

I won't even bother commenting on your "white hats" criticisms, since that's been pretty well covered by others...

However, to say that *your* solution is the only solution is not only short-sighted, it's arrogant. Black Hat "skilz" must be the mystery reason why about half the number of systems are infected now, right?

There isn't a magic bullet solution that will magically fix the problem completely, aside from getting rid of the internet (and maybe humanity too!). It has to be fought on multiple fronts and incorporating multiple solutions to mitigate the problem and hopefully if it's made difficult enough or they have enough that they can lose, then maybe it will stop... but it's much more likely that we're always going to be stuck with it to at least some degree.

Re:Somebody

[228e2]

No.

I know its "crazy" to think that not everyone knows how to run a bare bones Linux distro and knows how to block all ports except for 80, 8080, and say 21-23. But believe me when I say that the majority of computer users are incredibly inept when it comes to basic computer security.

Grandma will never be a network admin. Neither will your local elementary school teacher. Just because people run Windows out of the box and have no idea they are harboring an orgy of botnets is it fair to call them criminals.