Microsoft is putting up $250,000 for any new information about the infamous Rustock botnet.
"After publishing notices in two Russian newspapers last month to notify the Rustock operators of the civil lawsuit, we decided to augment our civil discovery efforts to identity those responsible for controlling the notorious Rustock botnet by issuing a monetary reward in the amount of $250,000 for new information that results in the identification, arrest and criminal conviction of such individual(s)," Microsoft wrote today (July 18) on its TechNet blog.
A criminally operated network of between 250,000 and 800,000 linked computers that in its heyday was capable of sending 30 billion spam emails every day, Rustock was taken offline on March 16 by Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU).
Rustock specialized in spamming offers for rogue online pharmacies and male performance-enhancing pills such as Viagra.
Although Microsoft officially vanquished Rustock more than two months ago, the company wrote, "there are still hundreds of thousands of infected computers around the world yet to be cleaned of the botnet malware."
If you have any information about the Rustock botnet or its operators, contact avreward@microsoft.com.