Microsoft and feds bring down spam-giant Rustock

It turns out that Rustock, purveyor of more email spam than any other network in the world, was felled last week by Microsoft and federal law enforcement agents. A lawsuit by Microsoft, unsealed at the company's request late today, triggered several coordinated raids last Wednesday that took down Rustock , a botnet that infected millions of computers with malicious code, in order to turn them into a massive spam-sending network.

"This botnet is estimated to have approximately a million infected computers operating under its control and has been known to be capable of sending billions of spam mails every day,"Richard Boscovich, Senior Attorney, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, wrote in ablog posttoday.

The Wall Street Journalfirst reportedthat it was Microsoft's digital crimes unit, working in concert with U.S. marshals, that raided seven hosting facilities across the country and seized the command-and-control machines that ran the network. Those are the servers that send instructions to the fleet of infected computers to dish out spam message hawking such items as phoney lottery sams and fake and potentially dangerous prescription drugs.The take down was known internally as Operation b107.

Hard drives seized yesterday at a hosting facility in Kansas City, MO.

(Credit:Microsoft)

Shutting down Rustock could put a huge dent in spam worldwide. Tech security giantSymantec estimatedlast year that Rustock was responsible for 39 percent of the world's spam. Global spam levels dropped 12 percent after Dutch authorities took down a large Bredolab last November.

Rustock's demise surprised the cybersecurity community last week, which often works in unison to corral spammers. According to an earlierJournal blog post, spam monitors didn't know why the botnet's activity halted. It was clear at the time that the effort was coordinated and complete.

Microsoft's digital crimes unit has long worked with law enforcement to track down and eliminate spammers, botnet and other malicious code creators. Government authorities rarely have the resources to spend on the investigations, something Microsoft willingly finances since it has a vested interest in keeping people emailing.

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