Security Experts Disable Huge Spam Botnet

A team of security experts took down what was reportedly the world’s third largest spam botnet this week. Security vendor FireEye worked with the UK’s nonprofit SpamHaus Project and the Russia-based Computer Security Incident Response Team to combat Grum, which was responsible for about 18 percent of all spam worldwide.. They took offline the botnet’s command-and-control servers in Holland and Panama. However, Grum’s controllers quickly set up seven new servers in Russia and Ukraine. The researchers said they located those servers and had ISPs shut them down. News agencies note that this is the latest in what appears to be a growing trend: corporations acting in lieu of law enforcement to stop malicious online operations. (BBC)(AFP)(The New York Times)