It’s time to celebrate. Your inbox just got one step closer to being junk free. Computer security experts have taken down Grum, the world’s third largest botnet, that until now was responsible for 18 billion spam emails per day. The researchers responsible started by blocking the botnet’s command and control servers earlier this week, but Grum’s controllers quickly set up new command and control centers. But the researchers prevailed, eventually taking down the new servers too. The Grum servers were in Panama, Ukraine and Russia, which until recently were all viewed as safe havens for this kind of activity. Instead of law enforcement authorities, technologists have started to take the lead in combating digital crime and that could start a pattern of more big take downs. There’s no guarantee that the Grum servers will stay down, but security specialists are hopeful. Let’s be thankful for what we have while we have it and rejoice in our cleaner inboxes.
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