Waledec botnet increases malware risk

Users face being deluged by spam and malware from 500,000 cracked email accounts

Security researchers have discovered that a botnet known as 'Waledec' has successfully cracked nearly 500,000 email accounts, and is likely to start using them to vastly increase its spam activity.

This makes the spam more likely to evade modern filtering techniques, such as IP blacklisting, as the messages will appear to originate from legitimate users.

Researchers from security firm Last Line also found the botnet had details of 124,000 FTP accounts, which can be used to upload files which then redirect users to infected sites. These sites can be used to serve malware, placing the user's machine under the control of Waledec.

Waledec is the successor to 'Storm', once one of the largest botnets in the world. Although Waledec is currently far smaller than Storm, given the scale of information at its disposal, this could be set to change.