Microsoft discontinued one more of botnet Kelihos. According to the company officials, a resident of Czechoslovakia.

Kelihos was also nicknamed as Waledac 2.0 named to commensurate a prior botnet, which the company discontinues during the last year. The Kelihos contained approximately 41,000 infested machines across the world and was able to send 3.8 million spam mails every day reported the company officials.

According to a complaint lodged in the previous week, the US District Court for the east district in Virginia accused Dominique Alexander Piatti, the Dotfree Group SRO, and John Does. The complaint said that these criminals were responsible for infesting victim machines with malwares that created this botnet. This was then used to transmit uncontrolled pharma and other spam mails, ask for passwords, harvest mails, and undertaken illegal stock market transaction. Sometimes, this was used to advertise websites that displayed sexual abuse of kids.

At the same time, sub-domains were being used to infest Mac machines with the Mac Defender malware. However, Piatti was unavailable for any comments.

Along with the complaints, the company is using a new idea to file restraining orders to secure permission from the court to break all the connections between the botnet and the infested machines, which are referred to as zombies. This halts the growth and operation of the botnet.

In addition, the company will work along with internet service providers and community emergency response teams to clean the infested machines that used the botnet. As a component of this process, Microsoft Malware Protection Center plans to include Win/32 Kelihos with the second launch of the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

With the non-availability of domain infrastructures, such as the ones hosted by Piatti and his organization, the botnet operatives and other vendors of frauds and malwares will face difficulties in operating anonymously while remaining invisible. According to Richard Domingues Boscovich, who is the senior lawyer at the company’s Digital Crimes Unit posted on a blog that by eliminating the infrastructure, Microsoft officials hope to discourage by increasing the expense of indulging in cyber crimes.

In addition, he said that this present case also shows the problem faced by the entire industry in using stealth sub-domains. According to him, the American law provides a more regulated environment for ensuring that pawn dealers do not transact in stolen goods. However, the regulations fail to curb the domain owners from utilizing their digital products for illegal purposes. As an example, every pawn shop owner must secure name, address, and adequate identification from the clients; however, no legal requirements make it compulsory for domain hosts to be aware of the details related to their users of sub-domains, which makes it simple for the owners to shirk their responsibilities.

After Waledac and Rustock, which were discontinued earlier in the year, Kelihos was the third discontinued botnet. The company has used similar legal and technical methods; however, it is for the first time that the defendants are named in a legal suit related to a botnet.