James Delahunty
25 Feb 2010 15:09
Microsoft Corp. has won a court decision that will allow it to attempt to topple a botnet by cutting off its methods of communicating with its creators. A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, granted a request from Microsoft to have 277 Internet domains deactivated, all of which are linked to the Botnet in question, identified as Waledac.
The judges order requires Verisign Inc. to temporarily suspend the suspect addresses, in an attempt to sever communications channels to the botnet before operators can establish links to the network.
Internet security firm NetWitness announced in February that a new computer virus had penetrated at least 2,500 organizations, breaching around 75,000 computers.
Botnets are networks of compromised computers that can be controlled by a centralized source, generally to dish out spam, carry out distributed denial of service attacks on targets and other illegal activities.