Microsoft Chases Unknown Producers of Malware Through the Courts

[steven johnson]

The famous anonymity that has allowed spammers, virus makers and disseminators of malware may be coming to an end.

These are not just nuisances but have been used to attack governments and infrastructure targets worldwide.

It's hard to know how they will go after foreigners, though.

Stepping up an effort to unmask online attackers responsible for a wave of malicious advertisements targeting Windows PC users, Microsoft on Thursday filed suit in Washington state Superior Court against the unknown individuals behind five companies that it alleges distributed “malvertising” that entangled its customers in fake-antivirus scams and infected them with other malicious software.

With the help of the judicial discovery process, Microsoft intends to subpoena companies like Internet service providers that may be able to track down the individuals responsible for the malicious Web sites involved in these schemes, said Richard Boscovich, a senior attorney in the company’s Internet Security Program. He said the investigation will look for any ties between the five cases and seek to quantify the extent of the damages suffered by Microsoft and its customers.

The suits are also meant as a deterrent and a message to cybercriminals that “we will take action if we find these things on our network, and we will be aggressive,” Mr. Boscovich said. “We will go after the people who are trying to go after our networks and defraud consumers, publishers and advertisers who use our services.”

Microsoft alleges in the suits that individuals associated with companies called “Soft Solutions,” “Direct Ad” and “ITmeter INC.” used malicious advertisements to distribute Trojan horses that peddled fake security software, or “scareware,” to unsuspecting Internet users. Two other entities, “qiweroqw.com” and “ote2008.info,” allegedly distributed Trojans that installed keylogger programs — which capture users’ keystrokes, usually in an effort to collect financial-account information — or programs that pull victims’ machines into networks of infected machines, known as botnets, that can be used to send spam or launch coordinated Internet attacks.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/microsoft-chases-unknown-scammers-through-the-courts/?src=twr">Microsoft Chases Unknown Scammers Through the Courts

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. ME was malware... 98 was malware.... thousands of computer

support people may have committed suicide from just these two releases... others may be in a rubber room.... so will MS be chasing themselves? Just wondering.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. Dear Microsoft, there is a concept called 'code review'

Please look into it.

[DainBramaged]

3. Microsoft sues over 'malicious' online advertising September 18, 2009

E-mail messages to ote2008.info and DirectAd were not immediately returned and phone numbers were not available for the companies. A phone call to ITmeter INC. went unanswered as did an e-mail message, while registration records for qiweroqw.com domain name had no contact information for the company. No contact information was available for Soft Solutions, which Microsoft said was separate from businesses operating by that name in Atlanta and France.

http://www.dailymail.com/News/TechnologyNews/200909180265