Head of Russian Payment Processor ChronoPay Arrested

Pavel Vrublevsky, the head of a prominent Russian payment-processing company, ChronoPay, was arrested in Russia on suspicion of hiring someone to launch a denial-of-service attack against one of his company’s main competitors. The arrest is the latest in a series of high-profile actions against...

Time to Focus on Results-Oriented Security

The security industry is full of pernicious problems with no easy solutions. Take spam, for example. The current best defense is filtering out the obvious spam messages. Yet, the countermeasure is not a solution: As anti-spam technology gets better, spammers merely churn out more spam and achieve...

Rustock Author May Be Former Google Hopeful

As Microsoft’s crusade against the Rustock botnet continues, a new article from Brian Krebs claims the formerly prolific botnet’s author may be a self-described mathematician and software engineer who once sought employment from Google. According to Krebs, who cites court documents filed by the...

Coreflood Takedown Raises Questions About Offensive Actions Against Botnets

For just about as long as there have been botnets, there’s been an ongoing discussion in the security and law-enforcement communities about the legality and ethics of taking proactive steps to disrupt the botnets’ operations and even to remove the bots from infected machines. Until very recently,...

FBI vs Coreflood botnet

FBI vs Coreflood botnet The FBI's unprecedented effort to behead the Coreflood botnet—comprised of millions of hacked Windows machines—appears to be working, at least for now. The bureau has tracked a dramatic decline in the number of pings from the botnet since the takedown operation began earli...

DOJ Shuts Down Botnet, Disables Infected Systems

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI said on Wednesday that they had taken actions to disable an international botnet of more than two million infected computers that was stealing corporate data including user names, passwords and financial information. Thirteen unnamed “John Doe” defendent...

Microsoft Builds Legal Weapon to Take Apart Botnets

The take-down of the Rustock botnet in March gave Microsoft another head for its mantle: two in just the last year. That’s an impressive take for any private firm, and one of a string of actions against bot networks in recent years. But security experts say that the company’s success in building ...

Mariposa: December, 2009

The takedown of the Mariposa botnet is an example of both the possibilities and complications facing law enforcement around the world as they work to stamp out botnets. A cyberlaw enforcement success story, the take down of Mariposa by Spanish authorities in December, 2009, followed months of wor...

Mega-D: March, 2010

The takedown of Mega-D, also known as Ozdok, was spearheaded by researchers at anti-botnet firm FireEye. The botnet, a byproduct of PC infections linked to the Mega-D Trojan, comprised tens of thousands of machines and was responsible for sending out a large portion of the spam on the Internet–at...

Waledac: March, 2010

Though not nearly as large or important a botnet, Waledac – which counted fewer than 100,000 infected hosts at its height – was notable for the tactics that researchers used to dismantle the botnet. Microsoft worked with a group of researchers at the University of Mannheim, the University of Vien...

Reports: Rustock Born in the USA

U.S. hosting firms accounted for the bulk of the command and control centers for the Rustock botnet, with many firms claiming that they had no idea they were harboring an illegal criminal network on their infrastructure, according to a story in Krebsonsecurity.com. Threatpost reported last week...

Lessons From the Rustock Takedown

As a follow-up to the Rustock botnet news, Microsoft have identified themselves as the key instigators of the takedown. This is the second time Microsoft’s legal team has been actively involved in combating the botnet menace – and they obviously learned from their previous attempt at trying to...

Alex Lanstein on the Rustock Botnet Takedown

Dennis Fisher talks with Alex Lanstein of FireEye about this week’s takedown of the Rustock botnet, the important legal precedent it helped set with Microsoft’s lawsuit and the mechanics behind the operation and dismantling of large-scale botnets. Podcast audio courtesy of sykboy65 Subscribe to t...

Microsoft, FireEye Take Down Notorious Rustock Botnet

Being a botnet operator has traditionally been a fairly reliable and easy way to make money. But it’s starting to become a slightly dicier occupation these days, as evidenced by the news of the takedown of the venerable and virulent Rustock botnet by researchers at Microsoft and FireEye. Rustock...

Microsoft brings down world's biggest spam network !

A Microsoft lawsuit, unsealed earlier today, is responsible for causing government raids last Wednesday that lead to the downfall of the world's biggest spam network, Rustock. Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit used information gained in its 2010 takedown of the Waledac botnet to work with the U.S...

New Analysis Shows Pushdo Botnet Sent Trillions of Spam Emails, Generated Millions in Profits

A new, detailed analysis of the operations of the infamous Cutwail/Pushdo botnet shows that the network, which had been he target of several takedown attempts in the last couple of years, is not only amazingly resilient, but also is incredibly prolific, with one section of the botnet sending more...

Microsoft botnet take down will not stop spam !

A prominent security researcher said he doubts Microsoft's take down of the Waledac botnet would have any impact on spam levels, as the company claimed. "Waledac just is not a hugely prolific spammer," said Joe Stewart, director of malware analysis at SecureWorks and a noted botnet researcher. "S...

Botnet Crackdowns Staunch Spam…For a Month

The crackdowns on massive, spam-spewing botnets disrupted the global flow of spam e-mail…for about a month. That, according to a new report out from Kaspersky Lab. “Spam in the Third Quarter of 2010” is the latest, quarterly report from Kaspersky’s anti virus research labs. It finds that several...

Hackers Use Google Code to Distribute Malware, zScaler Reports

Last year, there were discussions about Google Code—a platform that lets developers host their projects—being exploited to distribute malware. Research by zScaler has identified yet another instance where this platform has been misused. According to the Google Code site: "Project Hosting on Googl...

MS Wins Court Order Against Botnet Waledac

A federal magistrate judge has recommended that Microsoft be given ownership of 276 internet addresses used to control “Waledac,” a massive botnet that the software company has been working to bring down. Read the full article. The Register...