Inside the Grum Botnet
Summary: KrebsOnSecurity obtained a Grum botnet control server showing more than 193,000 infected systems running one of three versions of the malware, against roughly 136,000 sending addresses estimated by Spamhaus. At its mid-July 2012 takedown, Grum sent about one in six spams worldwide and could blast 18 billion emails per day, and the server held over 350 GB of email lists plus records for more than 1.3 million orders placed at rogue Internet pharmacies between February 2006 and March 2010.
Bottom line: The control panel's admin password was an MD5 hash of "megerasss" - a weak credential guarding a machine holding 2.3 billion addresses in a single directory and customer data on 1.3 million pill orders, and Grum later answered Krebs' reporting with a DDoS aimed at his site.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Malware
- Related
- ARTEX and beyond: AI-enabled penetration testing platforms Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026Fake GTA 6 download goes after Steam logins and crypto wallet data Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026Operation Endgame Takes Down Gootloader, CastleRAT and StealC Servers, Seizes 6.4M Stolen Logins Cyber Risks · Nov 13, 2026