Servers of third-largest spam botnet shut

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. - Authorities in three countries have taken down a half-dozen command-and-control servers for the Grum botnet, crippling the world's third-largest spam-spewing network.

The amount of spam flowing into people's inboxes has fallen for the time being 60 per cent since the peak in 2008, Mushtaq said. Many ex-spammers have switched from running huge botnets that attract the attention of authorities to operating small networks aimed more at infecting computers with information-stealing malware.