Spammers Hijack Computers on Microsoft’s Network

Microsoft recently said that spammers hacked into two PCs that were part of its network as well as manipulated them to push over 1,000 dubious pharmaceutical online sites, three of which were crashcoursecomputing.com, yourrulers.com and seizemed.com.

The incident became known during the 2nd week of October 2010 following information to Microsoft from Ronald F. Guilmette a security researcher based in California and an expert who keeps watch over spam activities.

Said Guilmette that spammers were using a pair of IP addresses -131.107.202.198 and 131.107.202.197 registered to Microsoft in the form of official servers in connection with more than 1,000 spam domains from September 22, 2010. Softpedia.com reported this on October 14, 2010.

Indeed, Guilmette said that the spammers' gang in discussion had already compromised a large number of computers the world over.

In the meantime, ever-since Guilmette made the report to Microsoft, the company started a probe on October 13, 2010, according to Response Manager Christopher Budd for Trustworthy Computing. Softpedia.com reported this.

Budd stated that the investigation had been completed following which they discovered 2 wrongly configured hardware appliances on the network that were hijacked inside a testing laboratory. While the appliances had been eliminated, the company was confirming that neither any system was adversely impacted nor any client information compromised, he added.

A very probable explanation as to how the attack happened, according to Microsoft, is that one computer within Microsoft's premises had been configured for waging the assault, possibly when malware infected it.

Said security blogger Brian Krebs, together with spam, a Microsoft PC was as well utilized for executing a DOS (denial-of-service) assault on his website. PCWorld.com reported this on October 13, 2010. The security blogger further said that he was sure that pharma spammers based in Russia launched the particular website assault.

Meanwhile, with a series of security measures that Microsoft adopted during the past few years, the company has cracked down hard on spam.

Specifically, Microsoft stated that it was adopting measures towards making sure that hardware appliances in testing labs, which were accessible through the Internet, were packaged with appropriate systems of security. PCWorld.com published this.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 10/20/2010