Court Grants Permission to Microsoft for Continuing ZeuS Botnets’ Takedown

Microsoft, awarded an order from federal court dated November 28, 2012, can now along with its financial firm alliances go on regulating the command-and-control (C&C) infrastructures of twin ZeuS botnets, which the software giant's technical and legal operation shutdown during March 2012, published eweek.com dated December 1, 2012.

The United States District Court within the ambit of the Eastern District of New York granted default judgment, in Microsoft's case, that issued a command to the company as well as NACHA (National Automated Clearing House Association) such that the two may maintain the deactivated networks amassed with Zeus infections along with the related domains for another two years. Earlier Operation b71 the codename for the first shutdown captured C&C servers inside Illinois and Pennsylvania that stopped the bot-networks from carrying out Internet-fraud.

Remarking about what the court ordered, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit's Senior Attorney Richard Boscovich stated that the extra time granted would let Microsoft to keep on jointly with CERTs (Computer Emergency Response Teams) and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) cleanse the PCs which were yet contaminated with the bot. Microsoft-news.com published this dated December 1, 2012.

It may be mentioned that the objective of creating ZeuS was for contaminating computers followed with installing keyloggers for garnering usernames and passwords stored or entered into those PCs. These particulars would then get transmitted onto the 2 remotely controlling servers. As Microsoft initiated the campaign to bring the servers under its control there was apparently a 50% reduction in the total computers having ZeuS infection.

More precisely, Microsoft's takedown effort of the ZeuS botnets seemed to considerably influence the malicious Trojan's proliferation especially to build crime botnets. For, the effort reduced the ZeuS-infected computers to 336,000 during one lone week of June 2012, over a half number decline, from 780,000 during one week of March 2012, Microsoft disclosed.

Further alongside the ZeuS botnet, Microsoft, during the last 3 yrs, by filing technical lawsuits as well as conducting shutdowns, destabilized botnets -Waledac via Operation b49, Kelihos via Operation b79 and Rustock via Operation b107. Understandably, there was a consequent sustained decline in spam and assaults against people's PCs.

Related article: Court Sentenced Russian Fraudsters For DoS Attacks

» SPAMfighter News - 12/8/2012