Microsoft and Symantec have disabled a two-year-old network of remotely controlled PCs, or "botnet", that was responsible for at least a million dollars in "click fraud" every year – and possibly substantially more – and which may have controlled as many 1.8m PCs.
The ringleaders are reckoned to be spread globally, in Britain, Russia and Romania, the US and Australia. They used false names and stolen credit details to register a string of domains and hire server space in a number of locations. None has yet been identified formally or arrested.
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