Blackhole Arrests – How Has The Underground Reacted?

About two weeks ago, it was reported that “Paunch”, the author of the Blackhole Exploit Kit (BHEK), had been arrested by Russian law enforcement. (In addition to his work on BHEK, Paunch is also suspected of working on the Cool Exploit Kit.) Some reports suggested that associates of Paunch had been arrested as well, although how exactly they were tied to BHEK remains unclear.

What is clear is how cybercriminals have reacted so far. As part of our continuous monitoring of global spam activity, we routinely monitor spam campaigns that use BHEK to distribute various threats.

Since the weekend of October 5-6 – when Paunch was arrested – we have not observed any major spam campaigns that used the BHEK to deliver malware. Let us be clear: in the two weeks since Paunch’s arrest, significant BHEK spam runs have ceased. Neither have we observed any other major campaigns that use similar exploit kits. The calendar below shows the major spam campaigns we have observed in the weeks leading to Paunch’s arrest:

SOURCE: blog.trendmicro.com