Microsoft today announced that it has taken down the Kelihos botnet, and is accusing a Czech resident of hosting it.

"Kelihos, also known as 'Waledac 2.0' after a previous botnet that Microsoft shut down last year, comprised about 41,000 infected computers worldwide and was capable of sending 3.8 billion spam e-mails per day, according to Microsoft," writes CNET News' Elinor Mills.

"The complaint filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia accuses Dominique Alexander Piatti, Dotfree Group SRO and John Does 1-22 of infecting victim computers with malware to create the Kelihos botnet, using it to send unregulated pharmaceutical and other spam, harvest e-mails and passwords, conduct fraudulent stock scams and, in some cases, promote sites dealing with sexual exploitation of children," Mills writes.

Go to "Microsoft halts another botnet: Kelihos" to read the details.

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