25 February 2010, 13:43

Microsoft takes legal action against botnet

Microsoft has obtained permission from a Virginia court to take action against the WALEDAC botnet. According to Microsoft, this involves taking down 277 internet domains. Microsoft filed a complaint PDF against 27 unknown plaintiffs on Monday.

Under the court injunction, VeriSign, operator of the .com top level domain, was required to temporarily shut down suspicious internet domains identified by Microsoft and suspected of being used to control data traffic within the botnet. According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has been informing the owners of the domains of the injunction since Tuesday. All of the domains involved are registered to contact addresses in China.

Visual representation of Microsoft's strategy against Waledac.
Source: Microsoft According to Microsoft, WALEDAC consists of a network of infected computers, estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands, capable of sending up to 1.5 billion spam emails per day. Microsoft has determined that from the 3rd to 21st December, WALEDAC sent around 651 million spam emails to Hotmail accounts alone.