Only days after Microsoft convinced a U.S court to allow them to shut down 277 internet domains that were the source of thousands of spam email, some experts have warned that the victory will be short lived as other networks fill the gap. As the Waldedac botnet was shut down, Imperva’s chief technology officer Amichai Shulman said “this will not make the problem disappear. It is a temporary reprieve.”
Heralding their victory as a legal first, Microsoft exclaimed “We will do whatever it takes to look out for our customers and our brand. We hope it will spur similar actions. This was a worldwide problem and we scored a big, big victory.” The firm’s head of digital crime Richard Boscovich added that to shut the network down had taken “an innovative application of a tried and true legal strategy. If the organisation behind Waledac had any idea we were trying to shut them down like this, they would have moved their operation.”
However, experts in internet security remained unconvinced that the move had dented global spam on any large level with Mr Shulman explaining “In the short term, other gangs will fill the void while the people behind Waledac regroup and start their operations all over again.” Meanwhile Richard Cox of Spamhaus said “Waledac was not a high threat, it’s less than 1per cent of spam traffic.” He added “if this did affect spam, we haven’t noticed.”
