Microsoft, Feds Pull Plug on Spam Network
Microsoft Corp. and federal law enforcement agents seized computer equipment from Internet hosting facilities across the U.S., in a sweeping attack designed to cripple the leading source of junk email on the Internet.
Microsoft launched the raids as part of a lawsuit filed in federal court in Seattle in early February against unnamed operators of the Rustock "botnet," a vast network of computers around the globe infected with malicious software that allows its masterminds to distribute enormous volumes of spam, peddling everything from counterfeit software to pharmaceuticals. That lawsuit was unsealed late Thursday by a federal judge, at Microsoft's request, after company executives said they dealt a seemingly lethal blow to the botnet in their raids on Wednesday.
As part of that dragnet, U.S. marshals accompanied employees of Microsoft's digital crimes unit into Internet hosting facilities in Kansas City, Mo.; Scranton, Penn; Denver; Dallas; Chicago; Seattle and Columbus, Ohio. The Microsoft officials brought with them a federal court order granting them permission to seize computers within the facilities alleged to be "command-and-control" machines through which the operators of the Rustock botnet broadcast instructions to their army of infected computers, estimated by Microsoft at more than one million machines world-wide.
