Spam News

3FN shutdown tied to drop in spam from Pushdo botnet

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Security vendors are reporting a drop in spam since a federal court ordered the shutdown of alleged rogue ISP Pricewert, also known as 3FN. The Federal Trade Commission said the company hosted command-and-control servers for a number of spam-producing botnets.

One security vendor said the shutdown of 3FN has coincided with a 15 percent drop in all spam, mainly from the Pushdo botnet. Another botnet, Mega-D, has fallen off since the shutdown was ordered on June 4th, although the biggest botnet - Rustock - was unaffected.

Botnets, collections of compromised computers, can be controlled remotely by hackers known as bot herders to send out spam, including phishing attacks and viruses in email attachments.

"Today, spam from Pushdo is still coming in to our spam traps, but at a much reduced rate," anti spam vendor Marshall8e6 said on its blog Monday.

Pushdo, also known as Cutwail, was responsible for about 35 percent of global spam in May, according to an intelligence report from MessageLabs.

Although it represents the biggest blow to spammers since the shutdown of the McColo server in November, security experts said the spammers would soon recover by moving to servers outside the U.S.

"What happens is you take out one of the big boys and somebody will take over those customers and start spamming for them," said Matt Sergeant of MessageLabs, according to SearchSecurity.com.