Waledac, also known by its aliases Waled and Waledpak, was a
botnet mostly involved in
e-mail spam and
malware
Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...
. In March 2010 the botnet was taken down by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
.
Operations
Before its eventual takedown, the Waledac botnet consisted of an estimated 70,000–90,000 computers infected with the "Waledac"
computer worm
A computer worm is a standalone malware computer program that replicates itself in order to spread to other computers. It often uses a computer network to spread itself, relying on security failures on the target computer to access it. It wil ...
.
The botnet itself was capable of sending about 1.5 billion spam messages a day, or about 1% of the total global spam volume.
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
won a court order which resulted in the temporary cut-off of 277 domain names which were being used as command and control
Command and control (abbr. C2) is a "set of organizational and technical attributes and processes ... hatemploys human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions" to achieve the goals of an organization or en ...
servers for the botnet, effectively crippling a large part of the botnet.peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...
communication between the various botnet nodes, which means that the extent of the damage is difficult to measure.Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
was granted ownership of the 277 domains used by Waledac to broadcast spam email.
The botnet was particularly active in North America and Europe and India, Japan and China.
See also
* Botnet
* Internet crime
* Internet security
* Command and control (malware)
*Zombie (computer science)
In computing, a zombie is a computer connected to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker via a computer virus, computer worm, or trojan horse program and can be used to perform malicious tasks under the remote direction of the hac ...
References
External links
Technical analysis of the Waledac worm
*
{{Hacking in the 2000s
Internet security
Multi-agent systems
Distributed computing projects
Spamming
Botnets
Hacking in the 2010s
Cybercrime in India