Mega-D botnet

The Mega-D, also known by its alias of Ozdok, is a botnet which at its peak was responsible for sending between 30% and 35% of spam worldwide.

On October 14, 2008, the U.S Federal Trade Commission, in cooperation with Marshal Software, tracked down the owners of the botnet and froze their assets.

On November 6, 2009, security company FireEye, Inc. claimed to have temporarily disabled the Mega-D botnet by disabling its command and control structure. This was akin to the Srizbi botnet takedown in late 2008. However, the Mega-D/Ozdok takedown involved coordination of dozens of Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and non-profit organizations like Shadowserver. M86 Security researchers estimated the take down had an immediate effect on the spam from the botnet. On November 9, 2009, the spam had stopped altogether, although there was a very small trickle over the weekend, directed to a couple of small UK-based domains that they monitored.

See also

• Storm botnet
• MPack malware kit
• E-mail spam
• Internet crime
• Internet security
• Operation: Bot Roast
• McColo
• Srizbi