Digital Trends - Earlier this week the computer security and antispam communities were puzzling over the sudden silence of the Rustock botnet, a particularly widespread and aggressive network of captive “zombie” computer that may be responsible for up to 40 percent of the world’s spam. Now, details are emerging about how Rustock was taken down—and credit goes to technology giant Microsoft (along with U.S. and international law enforcement) who were able to sever connections between Rustock’s army of captive computers and its command-and-control servers, effectively taking the botnet offline. Microsoft is now working to sanitize botnet computers before Rustock’s operators can find a way to re-harness them.