Posted by George Stathakopoulos
General Manager, Trustworthy Computing
Readers who’ve been following cybersecurity issues know that Internet-based threats have rapidly evolved to complex, stealthy attacks. The Conficker worm which has been making news lately is a classic example.
We’re announcing a partnership today with technology industry leaders and academia to implement a coordinated, global response to the Conficker worm. Together with security researchers, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and operators within the domain name system, Microsoft unified broad support designed to disable domains targeted by Conficker. In addition to the disruption effort, we also announced a $250,000 reward for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet.
It’s truly a broad coalition – including ICANN, NeuStar, VeriSign, CNNIC, Afilias, Public Internet Registry, Global Domains International Inc., M1D Global, AOL, Symantec, F-Secure, ISC, researchers from Georgia Tech, the Shadowserver Foundation, Arbor Networks and Support Intelligence. This is a unique instance where the broader security community has collectively come together to commit expertise and intelligence to defend beyond our boundaries and better help protect Internet users. At Microsoft, we believe that joining forces like this is the right way going forward to help combat criminals online.
More information is available here.