The past few weeks have seen the ransomware CryptoLocker emerge as a significant threat for many users. Our monitoring of this threat has revealed details on how it spreads, specifically its connection to spam and ZeuS. However, it looks there is more to the emergence of this thread than initially discovered.
We have identified one possible factor in this growth: the arrest of Paunch, the creator of the Blackhole Exploit Kit. Paunch’s arrest led to a significant reduction in spam campaigns using exploit kits. Clearly, this caused a vacuum in the spam-sending world – spammers would not all of a sudden stop sending spam. So they would need to send something out; what would this be?
