Microsoft takes steps to shut down Waledac botnet

Microsoft has emerged victorious from a sneak legal attack
in which it managed to get 277 Internet domains associated
with the Waledac botnet shut down, effectively cutting
its owners off from their swarm of zombie infected PCs.
According to the company, Waledac was one of the
10 largest botnets in the United States, and had been
responsible for over 1.5 billion spam email messages per
day, with over 650 million of them directed at Hotmail
accounts in the month of December alone. While the PCs
still remain infected, they cannot receive commands to send
out spam anymore. Security agencies reported that Waledac
activity had largely wound down within three days of the
domains shutting down.
The stealthy operation was codenamed B49 and took
several months to coordinate, according to Microsoft's
offi cial blog post on the matter.