It’s a busy time for botnets.

According to Marshal8e6, spam levels are up 60 percent between January and June. The vast majority of that spam comes from massive botnets such as Cutwail and Mega-D.

Today, eWEEK is focusing on just one of those botnets Rustock which has been spamming users for the past few years. In its latest biannual report, TRACELabs Marshal8e6 noted Rustock uses rootkit functionality to hide itself, and changes spam templates often. It typically uses HTML templates from legitimate newsletters and inserts its own images and links to give Rustock spam a mask of respectability. This also allows it to dodge spam filters.

In this slideshow, eWEEK has gathered images of Rustock in action to help illustrate a day in the life a prolific botnet. (Images courtesy of SecureWorks, Symantec, Marshal8e6 and FireEye)
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