The Cutwail botnet, founded around 2007[1] and also known by its aliases of Pushdo and Pandex[2], is a botnet mostly involved in DDoS attacks and sending spam e-mails.
Contents |
In June, 2009 it was estimated that the Cutwail botnet was the largest botnet in terms of the amount of infected hosts. Security provider MessageLabs estimated that the total size of the botnet was around 1.5 to 2 million individual computers, capable of sending 74 billion spam messages a day, or 51 million every minute.[3]
In February 2010 the botnet's activities were slightly altered when it started a DDoS attack against 300 major sites, including the CIA, FBI, Twitter and Paypal. The reasons for this attack weren't fully understood, and some experts described it as an "accident", mainly due to the lack of damage and disruption, along with the infrequency of the attacks.[2][4]
|
||||||||