Microsoft has upped the ante against global cybercrime; they are currently in the process of taking legal action in order to clean up malware and help ensure customers stay safer online - the move has also grabbed legitimate servers that rely on Dynamic Domain Name Service (DDNS) from No-IP.com in the legal malware dragnet in the process.



According to Microsoft, Mohamed Benabdellah and Naser Al Mutairi, and a U.S. company, Vitalwerks Internet Solutions, LLC (doing business as No-IP.com), for their roles in creating, controlling, and assisting in infecting millions of computers with malicious software—harming Microsoft, its customers and the public at large.

We’re taking No-IP to task as the owner of infrastructure frequently exploited by cybercriminals to infect innocent victims with the Bladabindi (NJrat) and Jenxcus (NJw0rm) family of malware. In the past, we’ve predominately seen botnets originating in Eastern Europe; however, the authors, owners and distributors of this malware are Kuwaiti and Algerian nationals. The social media-savvy cybercriminals have promoted their wares across the Internet, offering step-by-step instructions to completely control millions of unsuspecting victims’ computers to conduct illicit crimes demonstrating that cybercrime is indeed a global epidemic.

Microsoft provided the following graphic to show how cybercriminals leverage services like No-IP, along with some advice for customers to help ensure a safer online experience.

On June 19, Microsoft filed for an ex parte temporary restraining order (TRO) from the U.S. District Court for Nevada against No-IP. On June 26, the court granted our request and made Microsoft the DNS authority for the company’s 23 free No-IP domains, allowing us to identify and route all known bad traffic to the Microsoft sinkhole and classify the identified threats. The new threat information will be added to Microsoft’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Program (CTIP) and provided to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and global Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) to help repair the damage caused by Bladabindi-Jenxcus and other types of malware. The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit worked closely with Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center to identify, reverse engineer and develop a remedy for the threat to clean infected computers. We also worked with A10 Networks, leveraging Microsoft Azure, to configure a sophisticated system to manage the high volume of computer connections generated by botnets such as Bladabindi-Jenxcus.

Vitalwerks responded to the takedown with the following statement: We want to update all our loyal customers about the service outages that many of you are experiencing today. It is not a technical issue. This morning, Microsoft served a federal court order and seized 22 of our most commonly used domains because they claimed that some of the subdomains have been abused by creators of malware. We were very surprised by this. We have a long history of proactively working with other companies when cases of alleged malicious activity have been reported to us.

Unfortunately, Microsoft never contacted us or asked us to block any subdomains, even though we have an open line of communication with Microsoft corporate executives.

We have been in contact with Microsoft today. They claim that their intent is to only filter out the known bad hostnames in each seized domain, while continuing to allow the good hostnames to resolve. However, this is not happening. Apparently, the Microsoft infrastructure is not able to handle the billions of queries from our customers. Millions of innocent users are experiencing outages to their services because of Microsoft’s attempt to remediate hostnames associated with a few bad actors.