Microsoft’s ongoing battle against nasty botnets has continued, with the company announcing today that it has dismantled the Kelihos botnet and filed suit against defendants in central Europe related to the activities.

“The Kelihos takedown is intended to send a strong message to those behind botnets that it’s unwise for them to simply try to update their code and rebuild a botnet once we’ve dismantled it,” wrote Microsoft attorney Richard Domingues Boscovich in a blog post. “When Microsoft takes a botnet down, we intend to keep it down – and we will continue to take action to protect our customers and platforms and hold botherders accountable for their actions.”

Like the notorious Rustock botnet, Kelihos was used to control a person’s computer and then use the computer for illegal activities such as sending out billions of spam messages; harvesting users’ personal information; fraudulent stock scams and, in some instances, websites promoting the sexual exploitation of children, according to Microsoft.

Full blog post here.

 

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