Microsoft gets a court permission to wipe out Waledac botnet

Microsoft was granted a recommendation by a federal magistrate judge to size 276 internet addresses used to control “Waledac,” a massive botnet that the software company has been working to bring down. The recommendation by Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson of the US District Court for Eastern Virginia is a victory in Microsoft's experimental campaign to wrest control of one of the net's biggest menaces.

Soon after the launch of Operation b49, as Microsoft dubs the takedown, as many as 90,000 zombie PCs lost contact with the command and control channels used to send malware updates that keep them infected. Microsoft indeed behave very unusual when its lawyers sought a temporary order that seized control of 277 domain names used to administer the channels.

“To date, we have seen virtually no reemergence of Waledac traffic,” Jeff Williams, principal group program manager for Microsoft's Malware Protection Center, wrote on Wednesday. “This puts the Waledac takedown among a very few successful efforts to shut down a botnet without having it re-emerge.”

Among other things Operation b49 has another component that is equally novel. Armed with data captured from the command and control servers, Microsoft has detailed information about the hundreds of thousands of PCs that were infected by Waledac. The company is now reaching out to the ISPs of those head-spinning, demonized machines so they can seek a proper exorcism.