Microsoft Liberates More Than 1.2 Million PCs From Citadel Botnet

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.eweek.com/security/microsoft-liberates-more-than-1.2-million-pcs-from-citadel-botnet/

By Robert Lemos
eWEEK.com
2013-06-20

Initial numbers shared by the software giant suggest that its disruption 
of the Citadel botnet has resulted in criminals losing control over more 
than a million PCs.

A team of industry and law enforcement partners—including Microsoft, the 
FBI and financial firms—have successfully disrupted a collection of 
botnets running on the Citadel Trojan, freeing more than 1.2 million 
computers from the control of cybercriminals, Microsoft's Digital Crimes 
Unit said this week.

On June 6, Microsoft announced that it had executed its seventh operation 
against botnet operators, aiming to significantly disrupt a collection of 
nearly 1,500 botnets running on the Citadel Trojan. Normally, computers 
compromised with Citadel would attempt to connect to certain domains and 
receive orders, but Microsoft and computer emergency response teams around 
the world redirected many of those domains.

The domains that Microsoft gained control of through a court order were 
redirected, or "sinkholed," to company-controlled infrastructure, which 
Microsoft monitors to gauge the size of the botnets.

[...]

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