Symantec’s MessageLabs Intelligence, has just reported that the Cutwail, Bagle, Grum, and Rustock botnets, have been joined by a new botnet – Festi, which now accounts for 3-6% of the daily global spam.
As a percentage this doesn’t sound like an impressive number, but translated into actual spam volume; 1.5 to 3 billion spam e-mails per day globally – that’s impressive. Like all successful botnets Festi continues to grow by adding additional infected (botnetted) machines, to its network.
According to MessageLabs, Festi is responsible for at least some of the annoying “male enhancement” spam we are all so familiar with.
For information on botnets and how to determine if your machine has been compromised, the following articles should be helpful:
Tech Thoughts: 2 Free Port Checkers – CurrPorts and Process and Port Analyzer
Tech Thoughts: Catch the Bad Bots with Free RUBotted from Trend Micro
PCWorld – Monitor Botnet Threats Your Antivirus Can’t See
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