Andre Yoskowitz
20 Mar 2011 0:47
Microsoft and federal law enforcement have jointly taken down the spam giant Rustock botnet, seizing computers, servers, and other equipment from hosting providers in Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, Seattle, Scranton, Pa., and Columbus.
The devices were allegedly "command-and-control" machines, from where operators of the botnet controlled over one million infected PCs, globally.
Microsoft called the seizures a "decapitation" of the botnet, which was sending out as much as 30 billion spam emails every day.
The raids were part of a civil lawsuit filed by Microsoft last month against John Does 1-11, the unidentified operators of the botnet.
Hotmail, Microsoft's email service, is "taxed" by the huge amount of spam, says the software company, and Windows and Office users are hurt because the spammers usually exploit security vulnerabilities in Office or Windows to infect and take control of computers.