Splash One Bandit

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Though one of many, the Grum botnet had, on an average, over 1,20,000 active infected IP addresses sending spam to multiple targets every day.

The FireEye Malware Intelligence Lab reported recently that it had, in conjunction with Russian firms CERT and Spamhaus, taken down command and control (C&C) centres in Russia and Ukraine (following similar take-downs in the Netherlands and Panama) to completely eliminate the botnet.
In case you’re wondering what a botnet is, here’s the basic idea. Malicious software is installed in various machines around the world. This software grants control over the infected machine to a remote server, called a C&C centre. In the case of the Grum botnet, the various C&C centres used to instruct the infected clients to send spam emails across the globe.
Since it’s the third largest spam in the world, taking down the Grum botnet is definitely a good thing.
A senior staff scientist involved in the take down, Atif Mushtaq, said, “According to data coming from Spamhaus, on an average, they used to see around 1,20,000 Grum IP addresses sending spam each day, but after the takedown, this number has reduced to 21,505. I hope that once the spam templates expire, the rest of the spam will fade away as well.”
FireEye also noted a decline in Lethic’s (world’s largest botnet) activity as a result of the takedown. Mushtaq added that we should “keep on dreaming of a junk-free inbox”, and I hope that dream is realised soon!