Waledac botnet cracks 500k email acounts

Security researchers have discovered that a botnet
known as Waledac has successfully cracked nearly
500,000 email accounts, and is likely to start using
them to vastly increase its spam activity. This makes the
spam more likely to evade modern filtering techniques,
such as IP blacklisting, as the messages will appear to
originate from legitimate users.
Researchers from security firm Last Line also found
the botnet had details of 124,000 FTP accounts, which
can be used to upload files which then redirect users
to infected sites. These sites can be used to serve
malware, placing the user’s machine under the control
of Waledac. Waledac is the successor to Storm, once
one of the largest botnets in the world. Although
Waledac is currently far smaller than Storm, given the
scale of information at its disposal, this could be set to
change.

Source: ID Theft Protect