Microsoft’s $250,000 Bounty For Rustock Herders

by Angela on July 19, 2011

Company’s can perform their own internal investigations into a criminal event, but often, the help of the public is required to deliver justice. The question is how do you get the public to help?

Yes, there are many good samaritans that will help on their own accord, but there are also some people in the know that might be a little reluctant to come forward with any information that they may have. In this regard, Microsoft has put up a $250,000 bounty that will be available for anyone for information that leads to the conviction of the Rustock Herders.

It was in March of this year when Microsoft, along with a number of other companies, were able to bring down the botnet, thereby reducing the amount of spam on the Internet by one third. According to the numbers, it is believed that this botnet was responsible for the enslavement of millions of networked devices and in doing so, was able to make these slaves send out billions of spam messages each day. The messages that were being sent out were for the usual things including unapproved or counterfeit medications which was a violation of trademarks held by both Microsoft and Pfizer.

Although the investigation has been ongoing and the company says that they have “strong evidence”, this bounty is meant to take their investigation to another level.

Via: TG Daily