Microsoft points finger at Waledac dev: he worked at a firewall and antivirus company

 Before Microsoft and its collaborators took it down last year, the Waledac botnet was one of the most prolific spam machines on the internet. Although fewer than 100,000 computers had been infected (some estimates have the figure as low as 41,000), the network was pumping out 1.5 billion spam messages per
day. Waledac was also tied to the Storm Trojan, which was responsible for as much as 20% of global spam back in 2007.
On Monday, Microsoft made its latest move in the battle against Waledac. A complaint has been filed against Andrey N. Sabelnikov in a U.S. District court alleging that he controlled the botnet using 21 domain names — and more than 3,700 subdomains of cz.cc. Those domains were formerly served up by a Czech hosting company called the Dotfree Group, but ownership was transferred to Microsoft last October as part of a legal settlement.
One of the most interesting bits mentioned in the court documents is that Sabelnikov worked as a project manager and engineer at a “company that provided firewall, antivirus and security software.” That company was Agnitum, who develop the popular Outpost firewall products. In 2008 they parted ways with Sabelnikov, and his former co-worker Vitaly Yanko told the BBC that “it seems he chose the wrong route afterwards.”
It seems clear enough that Sabelnikov is a security pro gone rogue. Let’s hope Microsoft is successful in its prosecution an the message is delivered once again that cybercrime does not pay — speaking of which, we’re still waiting to hear how that ChronoPay thing is going.
It’s not just Microsoft that has turned to legal complaints in the battle against malware, either. The FBI is pitching in too, getting involved with international police organizations to dismantle malware rings several times in the last couple of years.