Microsoft Lays Banhammer On Email Spammers

[Allamorph]

[FONT=Calibri][URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8537741.stm"][COLOR="Blue"]Article[/COLOR][/URL]. (BBC)

So essentially, in a combined effort with Symantec (creators of Norton), The University of Washington, and independent e-intelligence foundation [URL="http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/"][COLOR="Blue"]Shadowserver[/COLOR][/URL], Microsoft has managed to secure a legal order to temporarily switch off domains to the Waledac botnet, one of the ten largest in the States.

Essentially, a botnet is a series of networked computers (networked I assume through the internet) all infected by the same virus by the same hacker. Spammers use this botnet to send loads of crap email to other internet users.

Here's a [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet#Formation_and_exploitation"][COLOR="Blue"]nice section[/COLOR][/URL] from Wikipedia describing it more completely.

I always wondered who the frack sat around sending that crap all day.[/FONT]

[Rachmaninoff]

[FONT="Trebuchet MS"]They can only shut them down temporarily? Pity they can't put a stop to that crap for good. Though I suppose the spammers/hackers will merely move to continue sending out junk. So a permanent shut down wouldn't solve it. Pity.[/FONT]

[CaNz]

who gets spam anymore? maybe its because i use a very expensive gmail but it gives me all the anti-spam i could ever need (aside from stopping my grandpas super conservative forwarded mail.

[Boo]

[font=AWESOME FONT FOR AWESOME PEOPLE]But, essentially they're just shutting down a hacker network, right? Because for a moment I got the idea that they're actually shutting down computers, which are essentially just innocent people who essentially don't have a clue. (Essentially they're not quite so innocent, really, as they were probably essentially too lazy to buy an essential Firewall and Scanner)

But essentially it's just the mean people then? <3

Though GMail does indeed do an essentially good job at blocking out spammers. It essentially wasn't until recently that I started receiving a few spamcans a month. It's pretty essential to add that I have had a GMail account since pretty much it existed, so. Yeah. Essentially, I think that's a good thing.[/font]

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Good that one of Microsoft's litany of lawsuits has actually had positive results for more than just the company itself, even if it's only on a temporary basis.

Perhaps it's just an overexpose to memes originally generated on 4-chan but am I the only one who thought the "operation" should've been called inb4 instead of b49 ?[/SIZE]