Microsoft will run a 30-day ad campaign in Russian newspapers Delovoy Peterburg and The Moscow News in an effort to notify the parties responsible for the Rustock botnet that the botnet has been shut down and that they are being summoned to court, the company reported in its blog on Monday.
According to the blog, the ad will include the date, time, and location of the trial hearings at which the owners of the IP addresses and domain names of the former Rustock — responsible for over 50% of the world’s spam — will have an opportunity to defend themselves.
The spokesperson in the Moscow office of Microsoft whom East-West Digital News contacted could not provide the exact message that will be published as it is not ready yet.
Seattle-based law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, acting on behalf of Microsoft who is a plaintiff in the case against Rustock, summoned 10 U.S. companies—mostly web-hosting providers—and Russian citizen Artem Nikolaenko to respond to a complaint the firm filed in U.S. court.
With the cooperation of hosting providers, Microsoft in March took down Rustock, a network of about one million malware-infected computers that sent spam promoting mostly generic versions of pharmaceuticals such as Viagra. Since then, the volume of spam on the Internet has decreased significantly as has the number of infected computers.
Source: WebPlanet.ru
