Top 10 Most Wanted Spam Producing Botnets

A security firm has put together a top 10 most wanted list of botnets. These botnets are responsible for pumping out the majority of the global spam volume which is now at a whopping 230 billon messages a day. Most of them have originated in Eastern Europe which makes the criminals behind them very hard to track down. Lets take a look at the list:

1. Rustock- Responsible for 43% of the global spam volume this is the biggest active botnet on the web. It pumps out millions of pharmaceutical spam messages for the infamous Canadian Pharmacy and others.
2. Mega-D- Coming in second with 10.2% of total spam volume, this is one of the longest running botnets around. It too sends out mainly pharmaceutical spam and gets its name from one of the fake drugs it hawks.
3. Festi- This newcomer is responsible for 8% of the total world spam volume and seems to work in tandem with the Pushdo bot net.
4. Pushdo- This is  a very complex botnet that carries out multiple campaigns and distributes malware as well as spam. Currently responsible for 6.3% of the total spam volume.
5. Grum- This is another pharmaceutical spam spewing botnet, currently responsible for 6.3% of total spam volume.
6. Lethic-Responsible for 4.5% of total spam volume and also acts as a spam proxy.
7. Bobax- Responsible for 4.3% of total spam volume. Pumps out pharmaceutical spam.
8. Bagle- Primarily acting as a proxy, Bagle is responsible for 3.5% of the total spam volume.
9. Maazben- With 2% of the total spam volume, Maazben sends only casino related spam.
10. Donbot-Another pharmaceutical spam spewing botnet responsible for 1.3% of total spam volume.