Security Incidents: Strange Windows behavior / Spamming customers

[Christopher Kunz <chrislist () de-punkt de>]

Hi all,

I don't know how many german-speaking members this list has, but I'd 
like to point all people who are working on the spamming/trojan issues 
to a rather good article in the german IT magazine "c't" 
(http://www.heise.de/ct/inhalt.shtml).
Basically, this article links the numerous trojans that circulate in 
peer2peer networks, irc networks like QuakeNet and IRCNet and via mail 
to the exact problem you're seeing. Seems like the creators of the 
trojan variants (built with a trojan building kit) use the trojans to
1) create massive botnets with tens of thousands of compromised hosts 
and use them for their own purposes (mainly dDoS)
2) create a steady revenue stream by renting out these botnets to 
spammers, who in turn relay millions of spam mails through these networks.
According to the article, there have been several arrests in the UK and 
USA connected to the investigations done by "c't" and a german student.
Just FYI.

--ck

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