Microsoft names two defendants in Zeus botnet case

In March, Microsoft announced that it had taken action to shut down a botnet that was using variants of the Zeus malware program. This week, Microsoft said it has named two defendants in the case and that it is turning over the evidence it has generated over to the FBI for their review.

In a post on the official Microsoft news blog, the company said:

In an amended complaint, filed last week, Microsoft named Yevhen Kulibaba and Yuriy Konovalenko as defendants. Microsoft has learned that these particular defendants were already serving jail time in the United Kingdom for other Zeus malware related charges.

The original complaint also said a number of other people were responsible for the Zeus botnet. However, they remain unidentified and are still referred to by Microsoft as "John Doe" defendants.

PCs infected with the Zeus malware use key loggers to obtain user names and passwords from those computers and then send that information to the malware's owners. Microsoft said this week that after their raid on the botnet in March, the amount of people that have received phishing emails from the botnet went down 90 percent.

Microsoft said it has also learned the locations of other PCs that have been infected with the Zeus malware and is working with ISPs to help the people who own those computers to get rid of the malware infection.

Source: Microsoft