http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/25/ms_waledac_takedown/http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/19026/microsoft_uses_legal_system_to_combat_botnet.htmlMicrosoft has won a court-issued take-down order against scores of domains associated with controlling the spam-spewing Waledac botnet.
The software giant's order allows the temporary cut-off of traffic to 277 Internet domains that form command and control nodes for the network of compromised machines. Infected (zombie) machines are programmed to regularly poll these control points for instructions and spam templates.
The .com domains, registered in China, will be sin-binned by VeriSign, at least temporarily decapitating the network. Microsoft estimates that Waledac was one of the 10 largest botnets in the US and a major distributor of spam for online (unlicensed) pharmacies, knock-off goods and other tat, as explained in a blog posting by its legal team here.
nice
edit:
http://blogs.technet.com/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/02/25/cracking-down-on-botnets.aspxWaledac is estimated to have infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world and, prior to this action, was believed to have the capacity to send over 1.5 billion spam emails per day. In a recent analysis, Microsoft found that between December 3-21, 2009, approximately 651 million spam emails attributable to Waledac were directed to Hotmail accounts alone, including offers and scams related to online pharmacies, imitation goods, jobs, penny stocks and more.
adding: I've had one of my *@live.com addresses spammed on a daily basis from these jerks. It stopped (surprisingly, because I would have thought once an email address is compromised, it's pointless and too late to act) when I checked my settings in LinkedIn, where my address was probably harvested. But it started again a few days ago (not today yet...)...Facebook is the other place, if not
the place where email addresses are harvested. I don't use these social networks, registered there out of curiosity
For those using WLM with hotmail addresses, don't forget to check the security settings so that every spam/scam that you block is automatically blacklisted
+ reported to Microsoft 
