A federal magistrate judge has recommended that Microsoft be given ownership of 276 internet addresses used to control “Waledac,” a massive botnet that the software company has been working to bring down.
The recommendation by Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson of the US District Court for Eastern Virginia is a victory in Microsoft's experimental campaign to wrest control of one of the net's biggest menaces. The effort, which commenced in February, has combined technical and legal maneuvers in an attempt to disrupt Waledac, which was once one of the 10 biggest botnets and a major distributor of spam.
Just a few weeks after the launch of Operation b49, as Microsoft dubs the takedown, as many as 90,000 zombie PCs lost contact with the command and control channels used to send malware updates that keep them infected. It was the result of a novel move, in which Microsoft lawyers sought a temporary order that seized control of 277 domain names used to administer the channels.
“To date, we have seen virtually no reemergence of Waledac traffic,” Jeff Williams, principal group program manager for Microsoft's Malware Protection Center, wrote on Wednesday. “This puts the Waledac takedown among a very few successful efforts to shut down a botnet without having it re-emerge.”
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