Microsoft and DCU's CyberCrime Center

Microsoft's (News - Alert) digital crime fighters have a new place to call home: the Microsoft Cybercrime Center, housed in the first floor of a building on Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus. Made up of 17,000 square feet, the digs tout two cyberforensics labs, a situation room, a briefing area and a sealed-off space where partners can set up shop to crack cases with the Microsoft staff.

 These “cybersleuths” are committed to taking down botnets, Trojans and other malware that pose a threat to computers, their users and America at large. The digital detectives, so to speak, hunt down malicious activity then provide the legal means to dismantle the infrastructure that supports it.

 The new crime center is also the headquarters for the newly merged Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), an organization also devoted to the pursuit of nefarious activity on the web. DCU seeks out botnets and malware. Its Intellectual Property Crimes Unit (IPCU) is dedicated to tracking down software pirates. The consolidation of the two organizations was based on the fact that investigations by the IP Crimes Unit tend to turn up information valuable to cybercrime investigations.

 Bonnie MacNaughton, assistant general counsel for the DCU walked Network World (News - Alert) through the facility, which is filled with tools that are useful for rooting out online criminal groups, including an application called SitePrint that detects common patterns among the characteristics of seemingly unrelated criminal Web sites. MacNaughton explained that patterns enable investigators to deduce common ownership and control of these sites and to go after the syndicates they represent. 

 DCU has developed a strategy for targeting the payment systems these criminal syndicates use to store stolen funds in order to “shut down the abillity to profit,” MacNaugton says. Using a technology called PhotoDNA, DCU also helps fight the proliferation of child pornography on the Internet.