Jonny wrote in pointing us to this FBI press release (more here). In this document, the FBI provides some more information on their Operation Bot Roast, which recently hit the news stands as a result of the arrest of suspected spammer Robert Alan Soloway.

 

No doubt this is great news for the community. Spamming, merely one threat exacerbated by botnets, has become a huge problem, and technical means are obviously not the best way to fix it. Spam will continue to move closer in appearance to regular mail, making it difficult for us to filter it out, and making e-mail less and less usable as a means of communication. As such, government intervention to stop these practices should be applauded.

 

Whether these arrests will do much to relieve the increasing botnet count remains to be seen. In order to prevent these botnets from being taken over by foreign botherders, law will need to be aligned globally. In addition, the fact that these machines got infected and remained part of a botnet in the first place shows there is a problem with the ongoing security practices of their users, administrators or hosters. To relieve this threat, we as security practitioners also need to do our bit to monitor the networks under our control, understand we have a problem, and take corrective action. In combination with enforced legislation, this will move us forward.

 

Cheers,

Maarten Van Horenbeeck