Over the weekend, Microsoft teams accompanied by United States marshals raided buildings and seized hundreds of web addresses to shut down a major botnet syndicate. The sting was part of a civil suit brought by Microsoft—because it was tired of waiting for law enforcement bodies to act.

The New York Times reports that the raids were masterminded by Richard Boscovich, "a former federal prosecutor who is a senior lawyer in Microsoft's digital crimes unit." Botnets—collections of compromised computers used for malicious purposes—are notoriously hard to take down.


But on Friday, Microsoft raided two office buildings—one in Pennsylvania, one in Illinois—to do just that. From the New York Times:


"That, in turn, has resulted in many variants of Zeus botnets, making them harder to combat. Most of them are aimed at perpetrating various financial scams against online victims. Mr. Boscovich of Microsoft said he had a "high degree of confidence" that the unnamed culprits behind Zeus were in Eastern Europe...



While that does mean that the action wasn't perhaps as successful as Microsoft might have hoped, Richard Boscovich explained that the company's plan is "to disrupt, disrupt, disrupt" in the future. So, for Microsoft at least, it seems taking the law into their own hands is the best strategy. [New York Times]

Image via Nils Geylen under Creative Commons license