The botnet infected as many as 8 million computers over the past two years, the companies said
Microsoft and Symantec have dismantled a botnet that took over millions of computers for criminal activities such as identity theft and click fraud.
The Bamital botnet threatened the US$12.7 billion online advertising industry by generating fraudulent clicks on Internet ads, which fund many of the free online services available to consumers, the companies said.
As many as 8 million computers were infected with Bamital over the past two years, wrote Richard Domingues Boscovich, assistant general counsel for Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, in a blog post Wednesday.
