Taking Stock of Rustock
Summary: Global spam volumes fell sharply over two months after the closure of Spamit, a Russian affiliate program that paid spammers to promote Canadian Pharmacy pill sites, and Rustock's output dropped below 0.5 percent of all spam since Christmas Day. M86 Security's Phil Hay found Rustock bots still phoning home to control servers and downloading files, which M86 later identified as pay-per-click fraud, and by January 10 researchers noted Rustock had resumed its pharma spamming.
What's compelling: A botnet that once sent a huge share of the world's spam did not go dark when its affiliate program closed - it switched to click fraud, and the pay-per-click traffic had been hidden underneath the spam volume all along.
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