US election hack: Microsoft wins latest round in court against Fancy Bear phishers | Latest News

Microsoft has won its permanent order proposal against the alleged group of hackers from the Russian government called Fancy Bear or APT28.

 Fancy Bear is believed to be responsible for the hacking of the National Democratic Committee (DNC) during the US election last year. American intelligence believes the group has hacked the DNC and leaked e-mails to WikiLeaks to help Donald Trump win the election.

As reported by The Daily Beast in July, Microsoft sued hackers in a federal court last year. They accuse them of hacking, cyberking and Microsoft's trademarks.

The process was not aimed at bringing people behind Fancy Bear into court, but seized domain names that controlled their malware on infected computers.

Registered hackers domains contain aspects similar to real domains of Microsoft, such as live microsoft [.] Net or rsshotmail [.] How.

Gerald Bruce Lee, the United States District Judge, authorized Microsoft to take dozens of these domains because infected computers could connect to Microsoft servers instead of attacking machines.

Microsoft had also filed a motion for a permanent injunction against the Fancy Bear hackers, which the court ruled on yesterday in favor of Microsoft.

Judge Lee ruled that the hackers are "permanently restrained and enjoined" from sending malware to Microsoft's customers and from hacking computers to spy on users.

 Microsoft had sued the hackers as John Doe and served papers to email addresses used to register the domains. Since the hackers never turned up to court proceedings, Microsoft was awarded victory by default.

The proposed default ruling on Microsoft's motion for a permanent injunction notes that Fancy Bear hackers are enjoined from using Microsoft's trademarks and internet addresses in a way that could result in deception of Microsoft's customers.

The injunction covers trademarks and brands like ActiveX, AppLocker, Azure, and Bing, as well as "confusingly similar variants".

Microsoft's suit against Fancy Bear hackers uses tactics seen in lawsuits it used to take down massive botnets, including Rustock and Kelihos.