Microsoft Slays Rustok, the Spam Monster

Rustock, a botnet that had been operating for the last five years was brought down by Microsoft along with the help of law enforcement authorities. The operation was codenamed Operation b107. Symantec claims that Rustok was one to be blamed for around 39 to 47.5 per cent of last year’s spam. Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company is also said to have been working with Microsoft to cut down the amount of spam on the web, since a lot of the spam is to do with selling fake drugs in the market.

Spam reduced by 39 per cent after latest takedown

The botnet operated by infecting the victims PCs and using them to send out spam emails. An infected PC could send up to 2,40,000 mails in a day. While the shutting down of Rustok is a good sign and it’s clearly being noticed in the graphs, it might be a little early to rejoice. Symantec, for one is unsure of how long Rustok will be down as it has stopped functioning for a short period in the past, only to return again.