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Spam Government The Courts News

Microsoft's Vigilante Investigation of Zombies 341

Posted by Zonk from the busting-undead-skull dept.
Morgalyn writes "According to an article at Information Week, Microsoft has decided to fight zombie-launched spam in their own way. In conjunction with the FTC and consumer rights groups, Microsoft set up a clean computer and then infected it. They monitored the 'zombie' over the course of 20 days - 'In those 20 days, this one computer received 5 million connection requests from spammers, and sent 18 million spam messages'. This whole operation has led to the (partial) identification of 13 different spamming groups, some of which reside in the US and may be prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM act."
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Microsoft's Vigilante Investigation of Zombies More

Microsoft's Vigilante Investigation of Zombies

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  • Steve Ballmer on Zombies (Score:5, Funny)

    by ponds ( 728911 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @03:56PM (#13899749)
    Microsoft should just have Steve Ballmer fucking kill them.

  • Microsoft fighting zombies? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrFlannel ( 762587 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @03:57PM (#13899751)
    Not a moment too soon! With Halloween on Monday and everything, this comes at a perfect time to save my brain. I'll still lock my doors though.
    • They should hire George Romero to make a documentary.
    • Costume 1: Guy disguises himself as a zombie and puts on a cardboard monitor. Here instead of "brainssssssss" he should say: "mailssssssssssss"

      Costume 2: A fat guy carrying a chair, with a Google T-Shirt (and the handwritten letters above: "I'll F**ing Kill". Obviously his secondary target would be the guy wearing costume 1.

      Now the following may be off-topic, but what the heck, I got started!

      Costume 3: Just put on a Bill Gates mask, and wear a Microsoft T-Shirt. And instead of "Trick or treat", you say: "End User License Agreement".

      Costume 4: Disguise yourself as a Lawyer and stick the logos of BMG, Sony, Time Warner (did I miss any?) on the back. Instead of "Trick or treat", say "Court or Settlement"

      Costume 5: Disguise yourself as Zombie, but instead of wearing the cardboard monitor, just put an AOL sticker on your shirt. You're an official "AOL user". Instead of moaning "brainssss" you'll say: "Me, tooooo!"

      Costume 6: Disguise yourself as a monitor, and paint the front in blue. :)

      Costume 7: Paint your face black and buy fake jewelry. Pretend you're the relative of a Nigerian prince who just died.

  • In other words... (Score:5, Funny)

    by shades66 ( 571498 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @03:57PM (#13899754)
    "Microsoft set up a clean computer and then infected it."

    So they switched it on and connected it to the net?
    • "Microsoft set up a clean computer and then infected it."

      So they switched it on and connected it to the net?

      Yes, exactly. The article isn't especially well written.
    • Yeah, but that's not the kicker, the kicker is that these asswipes let the 18 million spams get sent! Totally irresponsible!

      • Re:In other words... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by shades66 ( 571498 )
        >let the 18 million spams get sent!

        So can't they be fined for knowingly allowing this machine to send spam?

        • Re:In other words... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by mctk ( 840035 )
          Should they be fined for knowingly allowing this machine to send spam?
        • So can't they be fined for knowingly allowing this machine to send spam?

          Only if they allowed the spam to reach the destination.

          It would be trivial to set up a non-delivering SMTP server and then transparently proxy all the emails to it.

          • Even if not (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:18PM (#13899981)
            I haven't seen anywhere in the anti-spam laws that says you have a positive duty to stop spam. There doesn't seem to be any criminal culpability for getting a system hacked. The person doing the hacking and spamming is in trouble, but not the person that it happened to.

            If I'm incorrect on this, please point out the relivant part of the law.

            • Re:Even if not (Score:3, Insightful)

              by schon ( 31600 )
              I haven't seen anywhere in the anti-spam laws that says you have a positive duty to stop spam.

              We're not talking about a positive duty to stop spam - we're talking about aiding and abetting.

              If you set up a device specifically to allow spam to pass through it, and the spammer is breaking the law by sending the spam, then you're breaking the law. You know that a law is being broken, and you know that your property is being used to do it (in fact, you've made a positive step to ensure the spam is sent.)

              I don't

              • Re:Even if not (Score:3, Interesting)

                by abirdman ( 557790 )

                subject to the same law

                You haven't heard? All American corporations, and most others (even the ones that have been convicted of serious crimes) are now agents of the government. Ask your Congress-persons-- if you can reach them, because they're awfully busy sucking up to the corporate types in their districts. Many are out with their lobbyists, getting briefed on the new trends in how laws should be drafted, and can't come to the phone. Keep calling... someone from their office will eventually confirm it.

            • Re:Even if not (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Courageous ( 228506 )
              I applaud them for their efforts, and think they are doing the right thing. But this was a big risk they took. If someone were to sue them for damages, the situation isn't "negligent". It's not like they failed to take due dilligence precautions! Rather, they deliberately created the problem. Be that as it may, I rather doubt you'll find any litigants.

              I'd think they'd be able to more than sue. Access to entities like these zombies is a federal offense, and punishable by years in a federal penitentiary (as i
        • as per the summary,
          In conjunction with the FTC and consumer rights groups,

          So I would presume that they had all this ok'ed ahead of time and will not be fined.

        • Re:In other words... (Score:4, Informative)

          by vinn01 ( 178295 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @05:13PM (#13900440)
          They blocked the spam from being sent:

          http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct0 5/10-27ZombiePR.mspx [microsoft.com]
      • They had to to make it valid. Spammers run tests to make sure the spam they are sending is being delivered. If they communicate the non-delivery with other spammers, you're not going to catch many people.

        -matthew

      • Re:In other words... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Shanep ( 68243 )
        Yeah, but that's not the kicker, the kicker is that these asswipes let the 18 million spams get sent! Totally irresponsible!

        Yes but sent to where? Maybe all outgoing emails from this machine were re-directed to a local dummy mail server configured to just blindly accept these mails as a function of both evidence collection and prevention of actually sending SPAM to the intended recipients.

        These stories are usually light on those sorts of details.

    • Re:In other words... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:07PM (#13899883) Homepage
      You moderators may think that's funny, but there's more than a grain of truth in there. The current estimate by the ISC's DShield [dshield.org] for how long it takes for a random computer to get infected after it's connected to the Internet is 26 minutes.

      Think about that for a moment... and then ask yourself why we actually take this for granted instead of suing Microsoft into oblivion. Would a car company get away with cars breaking down on real-life roads an average 26 minutes after they're purchased? The thought is totally ridiculous, yet we accept the same from Microsoft. Why?

      • Re:In other words... (Score:5, Informative)

        by texwtf ( 558874 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:16PM (#13899960)
        That's not a reasonable analogy. This is more like the car is broken into within 26 minutes.

        The Internet is like Baghdad for computers but 10000 times more intense.

        The operating system doesn't merely fall apart - it's broken apart by the equivalent of roaming street thugs.

        I agree that microsoft it partially responsible (does rpc really need to be accessible by default?) - but on the other hand, until very recently your average linux install didn't take long to get 0wn3d either.
         
        • I have to question the validity of those numbers as well. Does that apply to "new" computers? Try buying a Windows box these days that doesn't have Norton or MacAfee pre-installed.
          • Not hard, try any machine out the Dell Optiplex range for example. Admittedly designed for business use where a site license for anti-virus software is likely to exist, but easy enough to do.

            However even when they do ship with anti-virus sofware say like a Toshiba Tecra laptop that arrived today. Plugged into my firewalled and NAT private lan, run Windows update only for a whole pile of critical updates some of which have exploits in the wild needed installing.
          • My Acer Travelmate 8101, purchased this July, had no anti-vir soft pre-installed.

        • Re:In other words... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by valhallaprime ( 749304 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @05:13PM (#13900434)
          "The operating system doesn't merely fall apart - it's broken apart by the equivalent of roaming street thugs."

          I strongly agree with this. I'm not pro or anti-MS, I just happen to be a SysAdmin that uses their stuff every day, and manages 120 desktops. It's just a fact that there are a lot of shady monkeys that are trying 24/7 to find exploits, holes, and other crap for nefarious deeds.

          Call it civic duty, but once a week I spend an hour going thru my spam-logs, and pick a couple (that are obviously being sent from 0wn3d boxen), trace their IP, look up which provider owns the range. I then call their NOC (Which is almost always listed in their WhoIs record), and report the IP (if they're a U.S. provider).

          I honestly get a call-back one out of every three times from a provider, saying they've found the hostile traffic coming from that address, and they temporarily block access, or alerted the sysadmin managing the address.

          It may be little, but it's sorta civic duty to do something about this from time to time. Kudos to Cavalier and Verizon especially for following up on my calls.
        • Part of the problem is that long, long, long after Microsoft had not only been told about the problem, but even actively lobbied about it, they insisted on shipping their 'car' with a spare copy of the keys under each bumper.

          Now that people are starting to ship with XP-PL2, enough services are turned off by default that a machine may have a bit of a chance at being able to download the latest patches before getting infected, but it's been far too much of a fight to get it there.

      • This will happen with nearly any O/S. I've heard the same story about any unpatched O/S whether it be RH, SUSE, OS/2 yadda yadda.

        Putting any unpatched system on the net is dumb. This is not unique to MS software

        I've seen some other posters mention car analogies. I think a good analogy for my point is: Would you drive a car that has had 26 factory recalls on it ?

      • Are you willing to say that you own code is 100% safe from the sort of issues that Microsoft encounters?
      • But cars don't break down after 26 minutes because they come with a firewall.

        -matthew
      • Would a car company get away with cars breaking down on real-life roads an average 26 minutes after they're purchased? The thought is totally ridiculous, yet we accept the same from Microsoft. Why?

        The answer is that traditionally, people have always viewed computer software as Magical -- we stand in awe at the fact that it functions at all, much less perfectly. In the past, when computers were new, scary, powerful, and incomprehensible, this viewpoint may have made sense. But in today's world, I think ou

      • How long do you think it would take for your car to be stolen if you left it parked in the worst area of Tijuana with the windows down and the engine running?

      • Re:In other words... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Phae ( 920315 )
        Think about that for a moment... and then ask yourself why we actually take this for granted instead of suing Microsoft into oblivion. Would a car company get away with cars breaking down on real-life roads an average 26 minutes after they're purchased? The thought is totally ridiculous, yet we accept the same from Microsoft. Why?

        Yeah, but most of us don't steal our cars

        Also, it's not a question of breaking down at this point (that was Windows ME's job) It's all about security.

        You didn't see car man

      • If my car had millions of people throwing bricks (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:56PM (#13900307)
        I'd be amazed if it lasted 30 seconds.

        When you get right down to it, cars are shitty in reliability compared to software. Off the top of my head, here are some major problems my car has, at least when looked at from a software standpoint:

        1) My car is very venurable to break ins. You can smash a window, jimmy the locks and so on. It's easy, requries no knowledge to do.

        2) My car doesn't deal with faulty input. If I set it in neutral and floor it, the engine will overheat and seize up. There's no system to deal with faulty operation like that.

        3) My car has problems with user error. If I drive it in to a wall on accident, it'll stop functioning. Same if a user of another car makes a mistake and hits it.

        Worse yet, the manufacturer will not fix ANY of these faults, even for a price. Even worse they KNEW about ALL of them when they sold the car.

        Now compare that to software where we expect that it be essentially faultless and when a fault is found, that it be fixed quickly and for free.

        Something tells me that if someone put a brick through your window, it would be them that you wanted busted, not the maker of your car. Yet if someone hacks your OS, you are mad at the OS maker, not that hacker.

        Only on Slashdot :P.
        • Now compare that to software where we expect that it be essentially faultless and when a fault is found, that it be fixed quickly and for free.

          Something tells me that if someone put a brick through your window, it would be them that you wanted busted, not the maker of your car. Yet if someone hacks your OS, you are mad at the OS maker, not that hacker.

          A delightful analogy but totally and absolutely bogus.

          Just activate your cerebrum for a few minutes.

          Is it reasonable to expect a car to be resistant to effort

      • Think about that for a moment... and then ask yourself why we actually take this for granted instead of suing Microsoft into oblivion. Would a car company get away with cars breaking down on real-life roads an average 26 minutes after they're purchased? The thought is totally ridiculous, yet we accept the same from Microsoft. Why?

        This is one of the worst analogies I've ever seen.

        Let's say GM makes a car. You buy it. You drive into a high crime area and don't have your doors locked. You get car jacked 26 mi

    • Re:In other words... (Score:4, Funny)

      by vsprintf ( 579676 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @06:39PM (#13901232)

      So they switched it on and connected it to the net?

      They were far too impatient to wait 30 minutes, so they infected it themselves. Remember these are the guys who do code reviews every twenty years.

  • Own...? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NoTheory ( 580275 )
    How is this fighting this in thier own way? Don't lots of other orgs do this same thing...? Don't they also fight spammers in other ways too? And also, if they're doing this in conjunction with a whole bunch of other people... how is this their own way? :P
    • In all fairness, the part that kinda explains the "vigilante" starts on Page 2 of the article, so 99.9% of /.'ers can be forgiven for missing it.

      Microsoft then used the IP addresses of the computers requesting connections, and the addresses of the Web sites advertised in the sent spam, to identify 13 distinct spamming groups. In some cases, those IP addresses and sites were compared to spam samples captured by Microsoft's Hotmail honeypots.
      ...
      Microsoft filed a civil lawsuit Aug. 17 in King County, Wash., an


    • How is this fighting this in thier own way? Don't lots of other orgs do this same thing...?

      Well, it's their own way in that other organizations [honeynet.org] are not so irresponsible as to allow the machine to send 18 million &#$% spam messages while they ooh and aahh over their creation. Microsoft "embraces and extends" yet again...

      From The Fine Article:

      "In those 20 days, this one computer received 5 million connection requests from spammers, and sent 18 million spam messages," said Cranton.

      That amount

      • Re:Well, it's their own way... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:40PM (#13900169) Homepage Journal
        That amount of data was impossible to analyze, so Microsoft focused on the three most-active spamming days, when 470,00 connection requests were made of the PC, and about 1.8 million messages were sent through it.

        How nice: they allowed 18M junk messages to go through, but could be bothered to look at only 10% of the data. Unbelievable.

        Do you want the job of analyzing all 18 million messages? If they are only analyzing 10% its probably because they figure that the other 90% probably have the same source. Even if the other 90% don't, sure you would want them to start somewhere, than put off affirmative action for a few years? One way of confirming whether the 90% do come from the same source is prosecuting the spammers responsible for the 10% and then dealing with the reduced amount of spam in the next cycle.

        • Do you want the job of analyzing all 18 million messages? If they are only analyzing 10% its probably because they figure that the other 90% probably have the same source.

           Fair enough, but if they are doing the analysis manually then they have already lost.

      • It does seem odd that they wouldn't keep working all the data they have to find more spammers, or why they couldn't have shut it down after it had "caught on" with the botnet operators (ten days.) I'm guessing the people behind the experiment had no idea how successful it would be and so arbitrarily chose 20 days. The people operating the honeypot probably weren't the same people who were running the experiment, and were just told "run this PC for 20 days and give us this data."

        The reason they would let

        • It does seem odd that they wouldn't keep working all the data they have to find more spammers, or why they couldn't have shut it down after it had "caught on" with the botnet operators (ten days.) I'm guessing the people behind the experiment had no idea how successful it would be and so arbitrarily chose 20 days

          Probably because they intended to go after the few big fish, then try again once some more big fish had appeared. Wash, rinse, repeat.

  • Vigilante? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bizitch ( 546406 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @03:58PM (#13899769) Homepage
    Since when is setting up a honeypot considered "Vigilante"?

    • Re:Vigilante? (Score:5, Funny)

      by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) * on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:10PM (#13899912) Homepage Journal
      Since when is setting up a honeypot considered "Vigilante"?

      Since someone wants Microsoft to sound like a tough SOB out to wreak havoc on those who would do us harm.

      Would you go see a movie that is described [imdb.com] as "A New York City architect becomes a one-man honeypot after his wife is murdered..."?

    • That's what I want to know. Where was the "second part" of the article where the guy dressed like The Punisher (except it's Microsoft Bob's face instead of a skull) showed up at each and every one of these spammers houses and killed them?

        That would be newsworthy.

  • Vigilante? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Negadin ( 261695 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @03:58PM (#13899778)
    If they are working with the FCC, why would it be considered 'vigilante'?

    That's like a considering a car company working with a police forensics department to determine why a car did what it did 'vigilante'.

  • It takes.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Friday October 28, 2005 @03:58PM (#13899779) Homepage Journal

    It takes 20 days to collect data which may be used to convict the scumbags, but it takes years for Microsoft to realize there was a problem and do something about it. To be fair, this should be law enforcement, but someone has to file those John Does in a complaint.

    "At the same press conference, Dan Salsburg, the assistant director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, urged all computer users to do their part to stymie zombies. "The FTC is taking aggressive steps to stop zombies and protect consumers, but consumers also need to insure that zombies aren't on their computers," Salsburg said."

    I'm sure they're shuffling paper like they've never quite shuffled before.

    Microsoft set up a clean computer and then infected it. They monitored the 'zombie' over the course of 20 days - 'In those 20 days, this one computer received 5 million connection requests from spammers, and sent 18 million spam messages'. This whole operation has lead to the (partial) identification of 13 different spamming groups, some of which reside in the US and may be prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM act.

    I just don't want to see, a couple years from now, Microsoft being awarded patents on the invention of the Honeypot.

    • takes years for Microsoft... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by shmlco ( 594907 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:24PM (#13900025) Homepage
      "...but it takes years for Microsoft to realize there was a problem and do something about it."

      Or we could, I suppose, get mad at the people who developed SMTP, a system so insecure in and as of itself that anyone can pretend to be anyone else and get away with it.

      Of course, that was done in a kinder, gentler time when "spam" was unknown, so I guess they can be forgiven. Then again, much of the Windows code was created long before the terms "DoS" or "buffer overflow attack" came into existence.

      Naw. Much easier to hate MS. Somehow, they should have known better...

    • I just don't want to see, a couple years from now, Microsoft being awarded patents on the invention of the Honeypot.

      Let's get together and file for patents on the SPAM process. Then we need to file papers on creating an OS that enables the above process. Then we need to patent the process of patenting the above.

  • ... to catch a spammer?

  • Right. (Score:5, Funny)

    by psbrogna ( 611644 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:04PM (#13899850)
    Ok, raise your hand, who thinks there's more than 1 infected windows machine on the Redmond campus?

  • and sent 18 million spam messages (Score:4, Funny)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:07PM (#13899880)
    and sent 18 million spam messages

    So I guess, Microsoft being above the law, it's OK when they do that. The end justifies the means, after all.

  • Won't work. (Score:5, Funny)

    by pellik ( 193063 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:10PM (#13899914)
    [i]"some of which reside in the US and may be prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM act."[/i]

    Common. We all know the only way to deal with zombies is massive head trauma.

  • Oracle to the rescue? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jrsp ( 513795 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:12PM (#13899926)
    From article:

    "In those 20 days, this one computer received 5 million connection requests from spammers, and sent 18 million spam messages," said Cranton.

    That amount of data was impossible to analyze, so..."

    So, seems 18 million records is too much for poor little SQL Server, hmm? I bet Oracle could help, or maybe MySQL/PostgreSQL.
    • So, seems 18 million records is too much for poor little SQL Server, hmm? I bet Oracle could help, or maybe MySQL/PostgreSQL.

      18 million records is a lot for mysql too.
    • I don't think it has anything to do with the database server, it probably has to do with manpower to do the investigative work on the IP addresses.

      I know for a fact that SQL Server can handle 18 million records easily, it's the transactions per a day that kills a server.

  • HOORAY FOR MICROSOFT! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Medievalist ( 16032 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:14PM (#13899942)

    I've always wanted a reason to say that.

  • Microsoft has decided to fight zombie-launched spam in their own way.

            Boom! Head shot!

  • Prosecution (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:16PM (#13899955) Journal
    some of which reside in the US and may be prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM act.

    I'd think there were more serious charges. Did the e-mail have forged headers? Does that make it wire fraud? Is unauthorized use of one's computers not a major crime?

    Zombies are entirely different from a company putting you on its mailing list without your consent. These people aren't annoying marketers, they're criminals.
    • "Wire fraud" implies that the spam mails were trying to secure money by fraud. Some of them probably were, but not necessarily all of them. The CAN-SPAM law was designed to make simple bulk advertising illegal unless it met certain criteria (valid unsubscribe addresses, non-forged headers, etc.) Wire fraud is a more difficult challenge to meet, though I bet when the prosecutions are ready they'll probably try that, too.

      I believe that they can prosecute under the CAN-SPAM act even without proving that the
  • ... rather than the honeynet project [honeynet.org] who have better tools [honeynet.org], and far more experience at this sort of thing?

    • Re:So why is the FCC working with THEM... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by grantsellis ( 537978 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @06:55PM (#13901391) Homepage
      Two options:

      1. Standard /. conspiracy theory that government is in M$'s pocket (see responses above).

      2. Microsoft's promise to sue the people responsable into oblivion. (Admittedly, the 'into oblivion' is implied rather than explicit.) This means that MICROSOFT PAYS FOR THE LITIGATION. The FCC gets Microsoft's honed attack lawyers for free.

      Microsoft has opted to do something where the FCC gets credit and Microsoft pays most the costs (litigation is expensive, especially when the people you're suing probably don't have money to pay the judgements). Why would the FCC choose them? It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

      Sorry, I'm a law student*, so I tend to believe in the glory and pragmatism of having someone else paying legal fees. :)

      *If I were an actual lawyer, this message would be three times as long and contain the same information. I'm working on it.

  • Zombies (Score:3, Funny)

    by Deanasc ( 201050 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @04:23PM (#13900004) Homepage Journal
    Now if only Microsoft could protect me from the real thing [theonion.com]. Then I could rest easy at night.

    On the otherhand imagine Paperclip... It looks like you're trying to fight off a zombie attack. Would you like me to (A) Shoot some of them in the head (B) Open the main gates and let some more in?

    New meaning to Blue Screen of Death.

  • Bastards... (Score:2, Funny)

    by p!ngu ( 854287 )
    ...I wondered why my gmail inbox had 18million new spams...

  • A couple friends and I set up a computer to measure our own security practices for hosting our own website before brining it online and live and then continually tried hacking into it. One night after we had connected it to the Internet while we were attempting access, someone else gained access through a hole we hadn't patched and turned our machine into a zombie. We set up a bunch of monitoring software and watched it. It attempted, or rather participated in, three DDoS attacks on various websites, it was

  • This has been a huge problem for longer than the past year, what took Microsoft or even the FCC so long to do investigate? The investigation wasn't exactly rocket science, they set up a zombie and watched it take connections.
  • Oh. They setup a computer and watched how it could be exploited and went after the people doing the exploiting. Now that seems like a smart way to handle the problem. If it was my product then I would consider actually closing the holes that allow spammers to exploit Windows to be the best solution. But hell, what do I know?
  • a) Why did they allow it to actually send out 18 million friggin spams instead of redirecting those to /dev/null?

    b) Did it scare them how easily the system was compromised? Yes, the articles says "they infected it". I'm sure they didn't, they put windos on it and let it run for a while.

    c) Will the spammers get off easily because of entrapment?

    d) Who is putting pressure on M$ to be suddenly so interested in spam after they ignored the problem completely for years? Something big is happening behind the scenes

  • They blocked the outgoing spam (Score:3, Informative)

    by dsouth ( 241949 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @05:25PM (#13900552) Homepage
    Though the Information Week article didn't mention this, an article at another site [arstechnica.com] makes it clear that Microsoft blocked the outgoing spam messages during their honeypot experiement.

  • Please tell me... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mr_z_beeblebrox ( 591077 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @06:17PM (#13901030) Journal
    I am somewhat antimicrosoft, but I fail to see why this is called "vigilante". Microsoft is working openly with the FTC. They set up their own computer, it got infected and they are investigating unauthorized connections to it. As a security professional I applaud their efforts. This is no different than anyone of you making a honeypot and checking the damage.
    Yay MS! Now, make Stevie B kill them (as other posters suggested:-)

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