Submission + - Hackers Infiltrate Storm Botnet Successor (darkreading.com)
ancientribe writes: In an undercover mission to learn more about the size and scope of the son of the infamous Storm botnet--Waledac--German researchers have discovered the spamming botnet is much bigger and more efficient than previously thought. The team from the University of Mannheim and University of Vienna team boldly infiltrated the Waledac botnet from Aug. 6 through Sept. 1 of last year using a cloned Waledac bot they built. They collected detailed data on the botnet and its inner workings: turns out it runs a minimum of 55,000 bots a day, with a total of 390,000 bots — much larger than previous estimates of 20,000 or so bots.