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Microsoft legal beats up on botnets

With court backing and a novel use of a civil procedure, Microsoft appears to be close to obliterating the Waledac spam botnet.
Written by Elinor Mills, Contributor

With court backing and a novel use of a civil procedure, Microsoft appears to be close to obliterating the Waledac spam botnet, changing the way online criminal operations are defeated.

A magistrate judge in federal court in Virginia is expected to recommend within days that the judge hearing Microsoft's case grant a default judgment, Richard Boscovich, a senior Microsoft attorney told CNET on Wednesday.

This would mean that the 276 Web domains deployed as Waledac command-and-control servers to provide instructions to thousands of infected computers would be forfeited to Microsoft, effectively shutting down the botnet for good, he said.

For more on this story, read Microsoft legal punch may change botnet battles forever on CNET News.

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