Microsoft helps kill Nitol botnet

Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit is doing a great job in helping law enforcement with discovering and taking down botnets. For the second time in six months the company helped destroy a botnet, this time it's Nitol, an emerging botnet that used more than 500 different strains of malware.

One of the remarkable things about this botnet is that Microsoft discovered the malware in "unsecure supply chains" that sold PCs with counferfeit software embedded with malware. The company therefore stresses the need to buy genuine software, because you never know for sure what may or may not be preloaded with cracked software.

The operation was code-named Operation b70. The operation came from a Microsoft study that found cyber criminals were able to infiltrate unsecure supply chains to introduce counterfeit software embedded with malware with the sole purpose of secretly infecting user's computers around the world.

By disrupting the malware strains, Microsoft says that it helped to limit the spread of the developing Nitol botnet. Microsoft previously disrupted the Zeus botnet, making the disruption of Nitol the second botnet Microsoft has disrupted this year. Microsoft says that in Operation b70 it was discovered that retailers were selling computers loaded with counterfeit versions of Windows software that were embedded with malware.

Source: DailyTech