Microsoft has filed lawsuits against 13 unnamed senders of spam e-mail who used botnets to distribute their messages. The actual charges were filed in August, but Microsoft only now unveiled details about the case. A botnet is a collection of hacked computers (referred to as zombie PCs) that are at the disposal of the botnet operator.
They rent the machines out to send spam, host illegal Websites, such as child pornography, or launch distributed denial-of-service attacks. The software developer earlier this year intentionally infected a computer with an Internet worm which resulted in it being made part of a botnet. The operation then quarantined the machine and monitored it over a period of 20 days.
News source: NewsFactor
