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Researchers Say They Took Down World's Third-Largest Botnet

Security researchers said they dismantled the world's No. 3 spam botnet after convincing the companies that hosted its command and control servers to pull the plug on the operation. Grum's control servers were mainly based in Panama, Russia and Ukraine.

Computer security experts blocked the botnet's command and control servers in the Netherlands and Panama on Tuesday. But later that day, Grum’s architects had already set up seven new command and control centers in Russia and Ukraine. FireEye, a computer security company based in Milpitas, Calif., said it worked with its counterparts in Russia and with SpamHaus, a British organization that tracks and blocks spam, to take down those command and control centers Wednesday morning.

"Grum's takedown resulted from the efforts of many individuals," Atif Mushtaq, senior staff scientist at security firm FireEye said in a blog post. "This collaboration is sending a strong message to all the spammers: 'Stop sending us spam. We don't need your cheap Viagra or fake Rolex. Do something else, work in a Subway or McDonalds, or sell hotdogs, but don't send us spam.'"

"It's not about creating a new server. They'd have to start an entirely new campaign and infect hundreds of thousands of new machines to get something like Grum started again," Atif Mushtaq added. "They'd have to build from scratch. Because of how the malware was written for Grum, when the master server is dead, the infected machines can no longer send spam or communicate with a new server."

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