How Three Guys Dismantled One of the World’s Most Powerful Botnets

If you ’re envisioning tune of computer code fly across bays of screens , amphetamine - fueled digital manhunt and dramatic , albeit rendered , explosion , I ’m sorry . When major botnets fallnowadays , it ’s the product of hard employment , longanimity , and some well - localize phone margin call .

For the last duo years , security firm FireEye has been under contract to protect its clients ’ information processing system from the Mega - five hundred botnet , a 250,000 - PC - firm army of drones that ’s probably spammed you at one gunpoint or another , if not worse . After a while , they took the fight to the botnet ’s home greensward . It ’s a tale of phone calls ! Emails ! civil requests ! Filling out forms!Etcetera ! :

FireEye and the registrar work to arrogate spare domain names that Mega - D ’s controllers listed in the bot ’ programing . The comptroller intended to register and use one or more of the trim do main if the existing domains run short down — so FireEye picked them up and taper them to “ sinkholes ” ( server it had place up to sit restfully and lumber efforts by Mega - D bots to mark in for guild ) .

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This is how you kill a botnet : by slowly , diligently sever all its ties to legitimize companies , which , whether knowingly or not , work a vital part in its natural selection . Anyway , BORING , why do we care ?

MessageLabs , a Symantec e - ring armour security measures subordinate , reports that Mega - D had “ systematically been in the top 10 spam bot ” for the premature year . The botnet ’s output waver from day to day , but on November 1 Mega - D accounted for 11.8 percent of all junk e-mail that MessageLabs get a line . Three day afterwards , FireEye ’s action had reduced Mega - viosterol ’s grocery store contribution of Internet spam to less than 0.1 per centum , MessageLabs says .

Three dudes prevented billions of averted V1AGR4 messages , without ever leave their office . They should make a Band of Brothers - style miniseries about this . It would be boring ! But I would keep an eye on it . [ PCWorld ]

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