Last March, Microsoft decided to lead a takedown on the massive Rustock botnet which had infected millions of PCs all over the world. The takedown efforts included having Microsoft and law enforcement representatives physically seize PCs and server hardware in a number of different US cities. Now Microsoft has offered up an update on those efforts via a post on Microsoft's official blog site and it looks like those efforts have had a big effect so far.
Just after the Rustock PCs were taken, Microsoft said that there were still 1.6 million PCs infected with malware from the botnet. Microsoft said that in a recent survey on June 18 there were only 700,000 PCs still infected on the Internet. The report also gave numbers on specific countries. In the US, the number of PCs still infected by the botnet was 55,731 in June, a decrease of over 35 percent from March. India had the biggest drop. It had 99,032 PCs still infected but that number is down by over 69 percent. The blog also has a video that shows infected PCs from both Rustock and the Waledac botnet via real time monitoring on July 1.
In its blog post Microsoft stated, "As we continue our efforts to fight cybercrime, one thing is clear: these threats cannot be tackled alone. It was through the combined effort of Microsoft, the judicial system and the industry that Rustock was successfully taken down." Microsoft says it will continue to give updates on its efforts to fight and clean up the effects of the Rustock botnet.
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