Microsoft Conducts Massive Botnet Takedown Action

h4rm0ny writes "Microsoft, in cooperation with Federal agents, conducted what the Wall Street Journal described as 'sweeping legal attacks' as they entered facilities in Kansas City, Scranton, Pa, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle and Columbus, Ohio to seize alleged 'command and control' machines for the Rustock botnet — described as the largest source of spam in the world. The operation is intended to 'decapitate' the botnet, preventing the seized machines from sending orders to suborned PCs around the world."

Comments

Re:Microsoft helps the internet

[Bert64]

Make cut down systems with limited functions aimed at end users (eg ipad), this will serve end users much better since they no longer have to worry about the complexity of a general purpose os...

Advanced users can still use more complex computers, on the basis that advanced users are far less likely to fall for social engineering tricks, you don't see many such attacks aimed at people using a cli based unix system.

Re:Too true

[h4rm0ny]

For the great majority of users, computers have become just too complicated and confusing to operate,

I think a part of that is people just don't accept that they have to learn how to use a computer. If they actually accepted that maybe they couldn't just sit in front of this complicated piece of equipment and magically do everything, then perhaps they'd take a few moments to think or read about it and then it wouldn't be so complicated and confusing to them.

There was someone extremely irritating at a place I worked some years ago, who asked me to help them line up the paragraphs in Word (some older version than the latest). After helpfully pressing a few buttons to line things up on the left again, accompanied by the cooing wonder of this ...person... and their inane comments of "oh, I'm so bad at computers", I made the mistake of pointing out the Help option in Word and saying: "you know, there's documentation on this. It would be worth taking an hour to read through it all.". Instant snappy nastiness ensued. I seemed to have called them a liar when they said that they were bad with computers and somehow implied that it was their fault. Goodness me! How dare I?

If someone who uses Word every working day of their life can't be bothered to spend an hour (less, really) reading through a little bit of documentation or a tutorial, then what hope is there? Must we all suffer from locked down, dumbed down systems because some people expect everything in life to be super-easy?

I see the point you're making. I fully understand it. But those of us who actually use our brains despise a looming future in a world where we're not able to because some people might injure themselves if they tried.