Malicious spam campaigns continues with Rustock botnet

According to experts from Marshal's TRACE team, emails with exploitive headlines mentioning George Bush, Microsoft and Al Qaeda in their subject lines are part of a coordinated malicious spam campaign from criminals controlling the Rustock botnet. The recent, large-scale campaign is designed to infect computers with malware and convert them into part of the Rustock botnet -- and it is succeeding, says Marshal. Over the last month, Rustock has grown to claim second place among the largest spam producing botnets behind the Srizbi botnet in first place. Rustock has increased its share of global spam volumes from 10 percent in mid-June to 21.5 percent last week, according to Marshal's TRACE statistics. Malicious spam, which is designed to infect computers with malware rather than promoting a product, rose to an all-time high of... [read full story]