Microsoft Attains Success in ZeroAccess Disruption

According to a recent announcement by Microsoft, the company has well succeeded in the 'disruption' of ZeroAccess the botnet that over time contaminated almost 2m computers globally while causing a loss of over $2.7m/month to Internet advertisers, published pcmag.com dated December 6, 2013.

Reportedly, for the disruption drive of ZeroAccess - its other name Sirefef - the software company accomplished the task with help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), EC3 (European Cyber-Crime Center) of Europol as well as tech companies, one being A10 Networks.

Microsoft even approached the district court of Texas where it filed a suit requesting an initial junction whereby American ISPs (Internet Service Providers) along with more entities regulating IP addresses and Internet domains associated with ZeroAccess should block all access to the mentioned network-of-bots as well as save all content linked to it so Microsoft's case could be made stronger.

Microsoft explains that the ZeroAccess botnet along with its parent network diverts Web-surfers utilizing Bing, Yahoo or Google during online searches onto hits which are actually infected. The overall network also generates mechanized traffic, which replicates end-users' clicks on advertisements, the ads that yield payments from the advertisers.

The software giant stated that ZeroAccess' network architecture made the botnet highly virulent and long-lasting among all botnets currently existing, while it had proved resilient to dismantling operations. Its bot program utilized peer-to-peer (P2P) infrastructure, so the controllers could remotely regulate through innumerable separate PCs, Microsoft added. Allvoices.com published this dated December 7, 2013.

Experts remarked that the threat was indeed very refined such that the dismantling exercise didn't wholly eliminate it.

Richard Domingues Boscovich, Assistant General Counsel at Microsoft described the exercise to be merely a "disruption" instead of any "takedown," reported infosecurity-magazne.com dated December 6, 2013.

Boscovich said that due to the threat's sophistication, Microsoft and associates didn't believe they could wholly eradicate ZeroAccess. Nevertheless, they thought their technical and lawful action would considerably interrupt the botnet's activity via the interruption of the commercial architecture of the bot-owners to a significant extent, while deter victimized PCs from performing malicious campaigns forced on them, he added.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/17/2013