Pushdo Power diminishes botnet in attack

The popular Pushdo botnet was left in total disarray after two thirds of its command and control servers were put offline by security intelligence researchers.

This botnet that was once responsible for over 20 percent of spam e-mail now barely even sent much spam since last Thursday.

Thanks to the perseverance of researchers from the firm Lastline

Only 10 out of the 30 servers they found running the Pushdo botnet remain.

Show that the botnet’s performance rapidly declined as it barely sent off any SPAM at all.

This well-known botnet has been plaguing the security world for quite a long time.

Its specialty was in sending spam that tries to gull recipients to install malware programs that specialize in concealing itself from security programs.

It was known for its capability to exploit and bypass audio captchas in Microsoft Live.

Another name for this botnet was Cutwail.

In the previous year, researchers were able to shutdown 3FN, which was thought to have harboured part of the Pushdo botnet.

Researchers were baffled however as spam messages continued to be sent.

Maybe the bots continued to send messages while waiting for new instructions from its control network. What strikes security researchers now is that the spam network has been quite silent now compared to then.

Is Cutwail in its dying throes? Or is their network so crippled that it needs time to repair and reorganize itself?

This is very good news for all of us who receive a lot of e-mail every day. Still there are other botnets still functioning and sending SPAM.  

The few host providers left who were informed by LastLine that their network had servers harbouring Pushdo botnet have yet to put those servers offline.

Whether they will or not is still yet to be seen.

The quest to reduce SPAM to almost nothing continues on and on.

Hopefully more botnets will be shutdown just like Pushdo.

The security firm has deeply cut this botnet down to size and it may be wailing its last SPAM before it eventually dies.

Protect yourself with SecPoint!