Microsoft Disrupts Nitol Botnet 92
hypnosec writes "Having procured permission from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit managed to disrupt more than 500 different strains of malware in a bid to slow down the threats posed by the Nitol botnet. Microsoft, through an operation codenamed b70 (PDF), discovered Chinese retailers were involved in selling computers with a pirated version of Windows loaded with malware. Microsoft believes the malware could have entered the supply chain at any point, for the simple reason that a computer travels among companies that transport and resell the computer. The Windows 8 maker carried out a study focused on the Nitol botnet, through which it found nearly 20 percent of all the PCs that were purchased through insecure Chinese supply chains were infected with malware."
Stole a domain? (Score:1, Interesting)
If I'm reading it right, they took down the botnet by having a US court take it's domain, was that a Chinese owned (.org) domain? I'm all for shutting down botnets, but to me it looks like they said to a US court that XYZ in that other country did something I didn't like, can I take control of their foreign website? I'd hate to see this be used against legitimate foriegn sites.