This entry was posted by admin on February 26, 2010 at 4:29 pm under IT News.

A federal judge granted Microsoft’s request for a court order this week, and the tech giant immediately used its long reach to sever connections between the controllers and infected computers of the Waledac botnet.

The Wall Street Journal reported that "the court order was issued under seal – a rare move in civil cases of this nature – to allow the company to secretly sever communications channels among the computers before the network’s operators could re-establish contact with the machines."

The head of Microsoft’s digital crime unit, Richard Boscovich, told the BBC that "this was a worldwide problem and we scored a big, big victory." However, others were less impressed with Microsoft’s action. Security expert Jose Nazario told the Wall Street Journal that "the botnet will survive this in many cases."

The Waledac botnet posed several different threats to enterprise data security, and could have been used to illicitly access SAP data migration services, among other things. It is difficult to quickly determine whether or not a computer is infected with botnet software.