Microsoft wipes out spam giant Rustock

Rustock faced several coordinated raids, which were triggered by Microsoft’s request to disclose the lawsuit filed by the company.

Rustock has infected millions of computers with its malicious code. The main purpose of this botnet was to add on to the spam sending network, for spreading the infection.

Richard Boscovich, senior attorney in the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit blogged, "This botnet is estimated to have approximately a million infected computers operating under its control and has been known to be capable of sending billions of spam mails every day.”

The report about the nabbing of the command-and-control machines, that ran the spam network, was first submitted by the Wall Street Journal.

It gave information about Microsoft's digital crimes unit, which raided seven hosting facilities across the country, in collaboration with the U.S. marshals.

These servers send instructions to the infected computers, to remove all the spam messages such as false lottery scams, fake and potentially dangerous prescription drugs. The whole process was internally famous as Operation b107.

Rustock responsible for 39 percent of spam
The world of spam will become hollow with the shutting down of Rustock. As per the revelations made by the Tech security giant, Symantec, Rustock was accountable for 39 percent of the world's spam.

The shutting down of a Trojan horse named Bredolab, last November, by the Dutch authorities also helped in reducing the global spam levels by12 percent.

Cybersecurity community was shocked by Rustock's demolition, as it works in accord to corral spammers.

Microsoft's digital crimes unit has been working in collaboration with law enforcement since a long time, to eliminate spammers, botnets, and other malicious code creators.

Though government authorities have little resources for spending on such investigations, Microsoft finances for all such search works, as it doesn’t want people to get annoyed by the spams and stop the process of emailing.