Skeptic Project

The Rustock botnet has been taken down. Going down with it? A huge chunk of the spam being sent all around the world. It's a nice victory for those of who hate getting spam, but the war is far from over.

We've talked about botnets on this show before. They're networks of infected computers operated surreptitiously by an outside controller, usually without the computer's owner even realizing it. One of the most popular uses for the botnet is to send out spam. The botnet operator uses the processing power of hundreds of thousands of PCs around the world to pump this stuff out.

Rustock is said to be one of the biggest botnets in the world but it was "flatlined" last week. The Digital Crimes Unit at Microsoft says they worked with U.S. Marshals to shut down web hosting companies that were making Rustock possible. We talk to T.J. Campana from Microsoft about how they went about conducting the raids. He runs down what the botnet was doing and how to make sure you weren't actually a part of this or any other botnet.

We also talk to security expert Bryan Krebs. He says the spam wars are far from over. Spam is still a lucrative market to get into for bad guys since everything you need in terms of resources can pretty much be stolen and concealed. He also says the future of infections will be not so much in your operating system as in your browser.

Also in this program, youarelistening.to something kind of amazing. It's the surprisingly beautiful music of ambi noise and police scanners.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/03/22/tech-report-spam-is-down-were/