Researcher: Worm infects 1.1M Windows PCs in 24 hours

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"We have registered a couple hundred domains," said Fengmin Gong, chief security content officer at FireEye, at the time. "But we made the decision that we cannot afford to spend so much money to keep registering so many [domain] names."

As soon as FireEye conceded, the hackers were able to reestablish communication with their bots.

Microsoft recommended that Windows users install the October update , then run the January edition of the MSRT to clean up compromised computers.

It's not clear whether the hackers behind Downadup are building a botnet of their own, said Joe Stewart, a senior security researcher at SecureWorks Inc., in an interview today. For the moment, they seem satisfied feeding victims fake security software, which pesters users with pop-ups until they pay for the worthless program.

F-Secure's Hypponen, however, sounded worried about the possibility that machines infected with Downadup would be converted into bots. "It would make for one big badass botnet," he said.

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