A Victory in the Botnet Battle
PC World has posted an encouraging write-up on the battle against one of the world’s biggest botnets – known as Mega-D. According to the article, a researcher at security company FireEye coordinated an international effort to bring down Mega-D, which is said to have infected an estimated 250,000 PCs and accounted for nearly 12 percent of all spam (per MessageLabs stats).
PC World's story, “Good Guys Bring Down the Mega-D Botnet”, quotes the FireEye researcher who led the effort, Atif Mushtaq, as recognizing this win against Mega-D as “…just one battle in the war on malware.” Still, the security researchers are sharing the methods they used with both U.S. and international law enforcement – another step in the right direction in terms of launching more coordinated efforts to fight botnets and organized cyber crime.