Waledac botnet

Waledac, also known by its aliases Waled and Waledpak,^[1] was a botnet mostly involved in e-mail spam. In March 2010 the botnet was taken down by Microsoft.^[2][3]

Operations

Before its eventual take down the Waledac botnet consisted of an estimated 70,000-90,000 computers infected with the "Waledac" computer worm.^[2] The botnet itself was capable of sending about 1.5 billion spam messages a day, or about 1% of the total global spam volume.^[3][4]

On February 25, 2010, Microsoft won a court order which resulted in the temporal cut-off of 277 domain names which were being used as command and control servers for the botnet, effectively crippling a large part of the botnet.^[5] However, besides operating through command and control servers the Waledac worm is also capable of operating through peer-to-peer communication between the various botnet nodes, which means that the extent of the damage is difficult to measure.^[6] Codenamed 'Operation b49', an investigation was conducted for some months which thereby yielded an end to the 'zombie' computers. More than a million 'zombie' computers were brought out of the garrison of the hackers but still infected.^[7]

In early September 2010, Microsoft was granted ownership of the 277 domains used by Waledac to broadcast spam email.^[8]

See also

• Malware
• Internet crime
• Internet security

References

External links

• Technical analysis of the Waledac worm
• Is the infamous Waledac botnet out of the picture or not? | TechRepublic.com