The Spam Diaries

News and musings about the fight against spam.
 by Edward Falk

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Another botnet goes down

Via Associated Press and other sources, three alleged ringleaders of the Mariposa botnet (aka W32.Pilleuz) have been arrested, with more arrests expected soon. The arrests were of three Spanish citizens with no previous records. Their names have not yet been released. They face up to six years in prison.

The Mariposa botnet is reported to have infected upwards of 12.7 million computers, including those belonging to 40 major banks and half of the Fortune 100.

The infection vectors included instant messaging of malicous links to contacts found on compromised computers, various P2P protocols, and one of my old favorites: infected thumb drives.

Much more detail can be found in Symantec's security blog.

Update: worth reading: two weeks ago Microsoft was able take down the "Waledac" botnet which was responsible for 1.5 billion spams/day. See PC Pro article Microsoft secretly beheads notorious botnet.

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