We can all agree that the internet is fantastic and opens up an entire world of information and other fun stuff for us to consume. We can also agree that the internet can be a massive pile of crap that we have to deal with thanks to spam, viruses, and botnets. Microsoft is fighting botnets and has won a major legal battle against one of the big botnets this week.

A US District Court judge for the Eastern Virginia district has granted Microsoft ownership of 276 domains that were once part of the massive Waledac cybergang botnet. The botnet was hit with the first major blow early this year when the same judge granted a temporary restraining order that took the 276 domains offline.

The interesting part about this case is that the owner of the 276 domains is unknown and as not able to mount a defense in court. Microsoft has stated that over a single 7-day period after taking ownership of the domains that 58,000 PCs attempted 14.6 million connections to the defunct domains in an effort to get instructions from the botnet control center.