Inside the Effort to Kill a Web Fraud 'Botnet'
Working With Law Enforcement, Team Cuts Off Servers for Zombie Computers
By Christopher S. Stewart and
Merissa Marr
connect
Updated Dec. 5, 2013 8:55 p.m. ET
For months, investigators at
Microsoft Corp.
MSFT +0.16% hunkered down in front of their computer monitors, patiently stalking the shadowy figures behind what the company says is a major Web ad-fraud machine.
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Then, on Thursday, they pounced. Armed with a court order and law enforcement help overseas, the team took steps to cut off communication links to European-based servers considered the mega-brain for an army of zombie computers known as ZeroAccess.
Criminals for years had used the ZeroAccess "botnet," which combines the power of more than 2 million hijacked computers—or bots—around the world, to fraudulently bill some $2.7 million a month from online advertisers, company investigators say.
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