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Experts take down Grum spam botnet, world's third largest

Computer-security experts took down the world's third-largest botnet, which they say was responsible for 18 percent of the world's spam.

Command-and-control servers in Panama and the Netherlands pumping out up to 18 billion spam messages a day for the Grum botnet were taken down Tuesday, but the botnet's architects set up new servers in Russia later in the day, according to a New York Times report. California-based security firm FireEye and U.K.-based spam-tracking service SpamHaus traced the spam back to servers in Russia and worked with local ISPs to shut down the servers, which ran … Read more

Botnets cause surge in February spam

Spam now accounts for close to 90 percent of all e-mail worldwide due to a surge in February, according to Symantec.

Two botnets named Grum and Rustock helped push spam levels up 5.5 percent in February over the prior month, according to the security firm's report (PDF). After doing business as usual over the past year, Grum suddenly sprang to life in February, increasing the amount of spam it generated by 51 percent. As a result, the botnet is now to blame for 26 percent of all global spam.

Rustock also surged last month, pushing up global spam … Read more