This is how it should be—private companies working with law enforcement to disrupt evildoers on the Internet. Late last week, Microsoft announced that it teamed up with the Department of Homeland Security, Europol, the FBI, Interpol, the Royal Canadian Mountain Police, the Computer Emergency Response Team Polska, security vendor ESET, and the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission, to take down the botnet known as Dorknet. Now that’s an impressive team.
Dorkbot, malware that steals login credentials from online services such as Facebook, PayPal, Twitter, GMail, Netflix and eBay, has infected an estimated one million computers worldwide since 2011.
This is the kind of public-private partnership that is necessary to combat the sophisticated online attacks that are affecting businesses worldwide. It is effective when security experts from the private industry lend a hand to those combating crime and will hopefully encourage others to do the same.