Microsoft's Final Battle Against Waledac Spam Bot
By Bryan on February 25, 2010 | Computer Security, Waledac botnet, Microsoft, .com domain, Verisign, botnet
US federal judge let Microsoft to kill Waledac botnet, one of the Internet's worst sources of spam. Microsoft announced that 277 .com domains will be cut off with a court order.
Waledac has been a major source of computer infections and spam over the 2009. Microsoft claims the botnet can send over 1.5 billion spam messages over one day.
In a lawsuit against the unknown spammers behind Waledac Microsoft argued that Verisign is a choke-point for the botnet. It has to be noted that Verisign manages the .com domain. Court ordered for Verisign to remove the botnet's command-and-control domains from the Internet.
Microsoft announced: “This action has quickly and effectively cut off traffic to Waledac at the '.com' or domain registry level, severing the connection between the command and control centers of the botnet and most of its thousands of zombie computers around the world”.
Verisign was unreachable for comments.
Microsoft is busy at the point that Waledac uses peer-to-peer techniques to control hacked boxes.Jeff Williams, director of Microsoft's Malware Protection Center in an email interview said: "It's a busy night tonight and tomorrow is probably going to be a busy day as well." Company also commented, that it will take additional technical countermeasures to downgrade much of the remaining peer-to-peer command and control communication within the botnet.
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