Russian Spam “Bump”

Have you noticed more spam lately? Well, it is real. Some Russians running a botnet network are pumping out way more spam than normal!

‘Pump-and-Dump’ Spam Surge Linked to Russian Bot Herders

“The recent surge in e-mail spam hawking penny stocks and penis enlargement pills is the handiwork of Russian hackers running a botnet powered by tens of thousands of hijacked computers. Internet security researchers and law enforcement authorities have traced the operation to a well-organized hacking gang controlling a 70,000-strong peer-to-peer botnet seeded with the SpamThru Trojan. According to Joe Stewart, senior security researcher at SecureWorks, in Atlanta, the gang functions with a level of sophistication rarely seen in the hacking underworld. For starters, the Trojan comes with its own anti-virus scanner—a pirated copy of Kaspersky’s security software—that removes competing malware files from the hijacked machine. Once a Windows machine is infected, it becomes a peer in a peer-to-peer botnet controlled by a central server. If the control server is disabled by botnet hunters, the spammer simply has to control a single peer to retain control of all the bots and send instructions on the location of a new control server.”

Please help eradicate spam! How? Never buy ANYTHING you get from an unsolicited message. Go out of your way not to. Once they can’t make money, they will stop. Do your part!