Security company FireEye and spam monitoring service Spamhaus have worked in conjunction with ISPs to shut down the ‘Grum’ bot network which was until this point estimated to be generating an incredible eighteen per cent of the world’s spam email.
Experts have advised that the ‘Grum’ network contained more than 120,000 infected PCs, all of which were controlled and manipulated by remote servers based mainly in Panama, Russia and the Ukraine. These countries have up until now been regarded as safe havens by the people running spam botnet control servers and it is only as a result of many combined efforts, including those of Russian, Panamanian, and Ukrainian ISPs, that the servers have been shut down.
It is estimated that approximately 20,000 computers are still infected however without active server control they will soon become ineffective.
The whole exercise has been seen as a shining example of cooperation between the various anti-spam organisations and ISPs and given the success of this operation it is likely that more such collaborative efforts will arise.
The BBC has further details on this story here.
