Meet The 'King of Spam'

Meet Rustock, which M86 Security Labs calls the King of Spam. And for good reason:

In the last six months, Rustock accounted for as much as 60 percent and never less than 20 percent of total spam attacks identified by the security software vendor, according to a blog post at the company's web site.

Apparently, Rustock is purely a spambot - a program designed to collect email addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists. In this case, the lists are used primarily for Canadian Pharmacy spam campaigns, according to the blog.

Does the program target federal agencies? Here's what Bradley Anstis, VP of technology strategy for M86 Security had to say in an emailed response to that question:

"Honestly, when it boils down to it, a spambot like Rustock isn't concerned about who it has targeted, because it's not geared towards trying to steal the credentials from government agencies; it's main [goal] is to infect as many computers as possible so that it has more bots in the herd. That's ultimately how it makes its money, by advertising that it has 'X' amount of bots available to spam, [which] becomes an attractive lure to get people to pay the botnet operator."