Taking Down a Botnet

The Wall Street Journal, By Nick Clayton

Last week, Microsoft announced it had shut down the botnet known as Kelihos, Waledac 2.0 or Hlux. The focus was on Microsoft’s Digital Unit and the way it was able to name a defendant who allegedly owned the domain that controlled the botnet.

ButPC World reports:

Microsoft did not disclose any technical details about how Kelihos was hijacked from its original operators because Kaspersky Lab handled that part of the operation.

Kaspersky has responded by telling its own story. It can be hard to understand the technology involved in the creation of “botnets,” networks comprising computers used for everything from deluging mailboxes with spam to launching “distributed denial of service attacks” that can shut down websites. But, Tillmann Werner, has done a pretty good job for Kaspersky Lab’s Threat Post in creating a compelling and not too geeky tale of the takedown of the Kelihos Botnet.

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