Spam surveillance organizations claim that there are around one million PCs in the world infected by Rustock. They are used to forward spam autonomously through the most modern techniques, with the ability to hide in the bowels of the operating system so as not to be detected by antiviruses. A recent study found that there is a 95% chance of finding an infected website in three months.
However, the monitoring groups observed a sharp decrease in the activity of most of the servers on which this botnet is based, one of the largest promoters of junk emails with pharmaceutical products, especially viagra and other stimulants.
"Normally Rustock sends between a thousand and two thousand emails to the second. Today, we have seen that infected systems have suffered an abrupt drop and only send one or two emails per second," said one of the Canadian anti-spam activists for Krebsonsecurity, who asked to remain anonymous.
Joe Steward, of SecureWorks, is in charge of monitoring 26 Rustock networks, says that during the afternoon of Wednesday everything remained silent. However, it does not have a clear explanation as to what could have happened. "It seems that someone has methodically followed up [their addresses] and knocked him down in one way or another," he told the security website. Teleoperators could be involved in this success.
The top 10 spam
Thanks to its monitoring, Spamhaus has located the original sources of most of the spam and malware that reaches our mailboxes. The group updates the information every 24 hours so that its users take it into account and can avoid being infected.
As has been constantly denounced, the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Republics such as Estonia and Ukraine are home to the greatest experts, tasked with setting up the mechanism that produces the most garbage online. In its "Top Ten spammers" there is also an American and a Hong Konger, a faithful reflection of the location of the replicas.
The North American country is, according to Spamhaus, the largest producer and disseminator of spam in the world, followed by China and Russia itself. Keep in mind that infected users also become disseminators of this problem. Argentina is the only country with a Spanish language that enters the list of the ten largest producers of garbage.
Rustock's downfall is just a win for users, though there will most likely be a replacement soon.
Source: ReadWriteWeb
