Microsoft and federal law enforcement agents staged a sweeping raid on Internet hosting facilities and said they had successfully crippled the operations of the Rustock “botnet”, a vast network of computers infected with malicious software and used to send spam and malware.
The raids on Wednesday were revealed late Thursday when a federal judge unsealed a lawsuit filed earlier by Microsoft, naming the Internet hosting facilities where the botnet's control computers were housted.
Teams of Microsoft officials and U.S. Marshals descended on data centers in Kansas City, Scranton, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle and Columbus, seizing hard drivers and, in some cases, entire computers.
The machines targeted were thought to be the “command-and-control” machines that controlled thousands of infected computers and used them to send out junk email, much of it for pharmaceutical products including Viagra and Cialis.
Web security firm Symantec said the Rustock botnet was the largest in the world, accounting for nearly half of all spam.Symantec said the raid appeared to have been effective, and said that Rustock stopped sending around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, shortly after the Microsoft teams made their move.
