Pushdo spamming botnet gains strength again

Computers in more than 50 countries are infected with a new version of Pushdo, a spamming botnet that has been around since 2007 and survived several attempts to shut it down.

At one time, Pushdo-infected computers sent as many as 7.7 billion spam messages per day. Security analysts have tried to kill it four times by commandeering its infrastructure, but a new version of the malware has emerged once again, with high concentrations of infections in countries such as India, Indonesia, Turkey and Vietnam.

“Pushdo was very successful in what it did, so coming up with various revisions or versions of it makes a lot of sense for the bad guys,” said Mike Buratowski, vice president of cybersecurity services at Fidelis Cybersecurity, based in Austin, Texas.

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