{"id":18940,"date":"2011-03-22T06:30:49","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T12:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=18940"},"modified":"2011-03-22T06:26:10","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T12:26:10","slug":"the-redstone-redmond-cops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=18940","title":{"rendered":"The Redstone<\/strike> Redmond Cops"},"content":{"rendered":"

The good news: one of the biggest spambot networks has been busted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Rustock botnet, an international network of virus-infected computers, had for years generated billions of emails per day, promoting unlicensed online pharmacies and cut-price impotence pills.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good riddance.<\/p>\n

But this was mildly jarring (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

But on Wednesday, security firms noticed email traffic from Rustock completely collapsed. It has now been revealed that Microsoft, backed by US Marshals acting on a court order, seized servers <\/strong>that it’s estimated covertly controlled almost a million Windows PCs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think this has been 100 per cent effective,” said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney in Microsoft’s digital crimes unit, according to the Wall Street Journal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, that’s cool.\u00a0 But back that thing up a minute.<\/p>\n

Microsoft has a “digital crimes unit?”<\/p>\n

Like, its own internal CTU?<\/p>\n

OK, maybe.\u00a0 But I’m just picturing what kind of equipment would be appropriate for a Microsoft SWAT team:<\/p>\n