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Microsoft Security

Conquering the Coreflood botnet

The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice announced an operation to take down the Coreflood botnet.

The term bot is short for robot. Criminals distribute malicious software (also known as malware) that can turn your computer into a bot (also known as a zombie). When this occurs, your computer can perform automated tasks over the Internet, without you knowing it.

Criminals typically use bots to infect large numbers of computers. These computers form a network, or a botnet.

Microsoft supports the effort to take down this and other botnets, and we’ve added Coreflood malware detection to the Microsoft Security Scanner.