Pushdo/Cutwail: August, 2010

Author: Chris Brook

One of the world’s most prolific botnets and a leading source of spam, denial of service attacks and malware, Pushdo was brought down by researchers at the security firm Last Line of Defense, who worked with hosting providers to seize 30 command-and-control servers involved in the botnet. Subsequent analysis of the seized botnet data shows the botnet showed that the seized servers –responsible for just part of the entire botnet –  sent more than 1.7 trillion spam emails between June 2009 and August 2010.

One of the world’s most prolific botnets and a leading source of spam, denial of service attacks and malware, Pushdo was brought down by researchers at the security firm Last Line of Defense, who worked with hosting providers to seize 30 command-and-control servers involved in the botnet. Subsequent analysis of the seized botnet data shows the botnet showed that the seized servers –responsible for just part of the entire botnet –  sent more than 1.7 trillion spam emails between June 2009 and August 2010. More than 500 billion of those messages were actually delivered successfully, generating some $4 million in illicit gain.

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