Security roundup: Crazy Microsoft botnet takedown; hot biometrics; not so hot romance scams; Facebook in trouble again

30.09.2011
In one of the  bigger security news stories Microsoft struck a blow against an emerging  botnet called Kelihos by using a legal tactic to .

More news:

Microsoft got an order from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, telling top-level domain registrar Verisign to take down the domain, on Sept. 22, but it was sealed until Monday. At that time, Dominique Piatti, who runs a domain-name business called Dotfree Group out of the Czech Republic, was served with a court summons in the case by Microsoft lawyers in the Czech Republic, according to IDG news. The site takedown occurred just after midnight, Pacific Time, last Monday.

Microsoft has used this legal tactic effectively in the past against the botnets and as well.

We can be glad that Microsoft lawyers are being put to good use in these cases! However, Microsoft apparently did get some help from Kaspersky Lab's in its takedown effort.

"Kaspersky Lab played a critical role in this botnet takedown initiative, leading the way to reverse engineer the bot malware, crack the communication protocol and develop tools to attack the peer-to-peer infrastructure," said Tillmann  Werner, a senior virus analyst with Kaspersky in Germany. "We worked closely with Microsoft's Digital Crimes unit, sharing the relevant information and providing them with access to our live botnet tracking system."