Windows PCs infected with the Conficker worm have turned into junk mail-spewing robots capable of sending billions of spam messages a day, a security company warned.
According to Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based antivirus firm, yesterday's update to Conficker, which in some cases was accompanied by the Waledac spam bot, has resulted in a floodtide of junk e-mail.
"In just 12 hours, one bot alone sent out 42,298 spam messages," said Kaspersky researcher Alex Gostev in a message Friday. "A simple calculation shows that one bot sends out around 80,000 emails in 24 hours. Assuming that there are 5 million infected machines out there, the [Conficker] botnet could send out about 400 billion spam messages over a 24-hour period!"
More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/162988/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws
According to Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based antivirus firm, yesterday's update to Conficker, which in some cases was accompanied by the Waledac spam bot, has resulted in a floodtide of junk e-mail.
"In just 12 hours, one bot alone sent out 42,298 spam messages," said Kaspersky researcher Alex Gostev in a message Friday. "A simple calculation shows that one bot sends out around 80,000 emails in 24 hours. Assuming that there are 5 million infected machines out there, the [Conficker] botnet could send out about 400 billion spam messages over a 24-hour period!"
More: http://www.pcworld.com/article/162988/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws
