Rustock, purveyor of more e-mail spam than any other network in the world, was felled last week by Microsoft and federal law enforcement agents.
A lawsuit by Microsoft that was unsealed at the company’s request late today triggered several coordinated raids last Wednesday that took down Rustock, a botnet that infected millions of computers with malicious code in order to turn them into a massive spam-sending network.
“This botnet is estimated to have approximately a million infected computers operating under its control and has been known to be capable of sending billions of spam mails every day,” Richard Boscovich, senior attorney in the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, wrote in a blog post today.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that it was Microsoft’s digital crimes unit, working in concert with U.S. marshals, that raided seven hosting facilities across the country and seized the command-and-control machines that ran the network…
Shutting down Rustock could put a huge dent in spam worldwide. Tech security giant Symantec estimated last year that Rustock was responsible for 39 percent of the world’s spam.
Nuthin’ wrong with an occasional dose of anti-parasite medicine.
Microsoft For The Win.
I wonder why Apple wasn’t involved in helping the Feds taking out Rustock…
Both organizations are to be commended. I’m starting to think that spam senders that get to big will get knocked out. The bad news is they have to be extremely large before that happens.
I still think that people who pay the spammers to send spam need to face legal issues as well. If nobody was buying they could not sell.
Good. Now….how much jail time for the bastards?
No WONDER I saw such a huge uptick in my spam on my servers!
No arrests made, just equipment seized. Everybody’s happy.
In #1 Floyd said: …why Apple wasn’t involved…
Because OS X is a properly designed operating system?
Not to be a fan-boy here. but since OS X came out I have been a virus victim exactly zero times.
In the same period of time, the bank where I contracted put the emergency brakes on all of us and spent money and time to clean up and rebuild the widows desktop machines.
It was a large bank and hated viruses, worms and spam with a passion,(my section deployed over 14,000 desktops in 4 locations,) so they took viruses (virii? 🙂 very seriously.
Not to be an alternate fan-boy, but since I began using the NT versions of Windows going back to the 3.5 days, I too have been a virus victim exactly zero times. Some call that “knowing WTF you are doing”.
It would be more accurate to say that because not enough real businesses use OS X, it isn’t enough of a target to warrant the attention of virus writers.
The story was about a large spam operation, and only tangentially about viruses. Your Mac does not prevent you from receiving spam.
apple want involved as viruses are strickly the realm of windows machines..
as for the guy with with the nt fixation, your machine is infected you just dont know it.
I have to agree with Thomas (though I’m not that old school). The last virus I got on one of my machines was when I was using XP years ago. I have not had a virus using Vista and Windows 7 even though my browsers sometimes go where no browser fear tread.
Norwegian Blue?
odd.. I’ve noticed my spam increasing in the past week.
# 11 admfubar said, “your machine is infected you just dont know it.”
Adm: I gotta agree with Thomas and the Cap’n. Haven’t had a virus in over a decade and my computers have been in some very dangerous places – digitally and physically. OSx is not secure. It just doesn’t get hit very often. Not because it’s inherently better but because there aren’t enough Macs around to entice the hackers.
But, more on topic, spam. I see only a couple of spam messages every month. That doesn’t even count as an annoyance. Spam filters are pretty durned good these days.
To paraphrase Thomas: if you’re getting a lot of spam and/or viruses, you do NOT know WTF you’re doing.
#15
Couldn’t have said it better myself! 🙂
I have Windows and MacOS workstations in many labs and offices and maybe 30 laptops and perhaps 10 dedicated Linux stations. My biggest problem security wise is theft of intellectual property. By staff and foreign students. Physically, the issue is that Dell is making shit PCs. Apple QA is solid, which is why all my line managers and senior researchers and academics have MacOS. I pity the financial administrator with a new Dell. My biggest push for 2011 is to get them onboard Mac.
People still get spam? Hasn’t anyone ever heard of filters?