Joseph Menn
SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it had disrupted the largest network of compromised personal computers, involving about 2 million machines around the world, since it stepped up its battle against organised online criminals three years ago.
The Redmond, Washington, based software giant filed a lawsuit in Texas and won a judge's order directing internet service providers to block all traffic to 18 internet addresses that were used to direct fraudulent activity to the infected machines.
Law enforcement in many European countries served warrants at the same time, seizing servers expected to contain more evidence about the leaders of the ZeroAccess crime ring, which was devoted to "click fraud".
Such rings use networks of captive machines, known as botnets, in complicated schemes that force them to click on ads without the computer owners' knowledge. The schemes cheat advertisers on search engines including Microsoft's Bing by making them pay for interactions that have no chance of leading to a sale. Microsoft said the botnet had been costing advertisers on Bing, Google Inc and Yahoo Inc an estimated $2.7 million (R270m) monthly.
The co-ordinated effort marks the eighth time Microsoft has moved against a botnet and a rare instance of it doing serious damage to one that is controlled with a peer-to-peer mechanism, where infected machines give each other instructions instead of relying on a central server that defenders can hunt down.
The company is working with national computer security authorities in various countries and with internet service providers to notify individual computer owners with infected machines, hoping to reach most of them before the fraudsters can spread new instructions.
For now, at least, the fraud by this network had stopped, said Microsoft assistant general counsel Richard Boscovich. - Reuters
Weekend Argus
SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it had disrupted the largest network of compromised personal computers, involving about 2 million machines around the world, since it stepped up its battle against organised online criminals three years ago.
The Redmond, Washington, based software giant filed a lawsuit in Texas and won a judge's order directing internet service providers to block all traffic to 18 internet addresses that were used to direct fraudulent activity to the infected machines.
Law enforcement in many European countries served warrants at the same time, seizing servers expected to contain more evidence about the leaders of the ZeroAccess crime ring, which was devoted to "click fraud".
Such rings use networks of captive machines, known as botnets, in complicated schemes that force them to click on ads without the computer owners' knowledge. The schemes cheat advertisers on search engines including Microsoft's Bing by making them pay for interactions that have no chance of leading to a sale. Microsoft said the botnet had been costing advertisers on Bing, Google Inc and Yahoo Inc an estimated $2.7 million (R270m) monthly.
The co-ordinated effort marks the eighth time Microsoft has moved against a botnet and a rare instance of it doing serious damage to one that is controlled with a peer-to-peer mechanism, where infected machines give each other instructions instead of relying on a central server that defenders can hunt down.
The company is working with national computer security authorities in various countries and with internet service providers to notify individual computer owners with infected machines, hoping to reach most of them before the fraudsters can spread new instructions.
For now, at least, the fraud by this network had stopped, said Microsoft assistant general counsel Richard Boscovich. - Reuters
Weekend Argus