FireEye: Botnet Busters

Alex Lanstein stared at the 65-inch computer monitor in the living room of his Boston apartment. Streaming data lit up the screen, the actions of a cyberlord giving orders to his botnet, a zombie army of hijacked computers controlled from an unknown location . It was early in the morning of Mar.16. The 25-year-old cybersecurity analyst had spent months preparing for the events soon to unfold. His reddish hair still matted down from sleep, Lanstein stood up and poured another cup of coffee. Suddenly, the data stream flickering on the monitor became dark, and a smile curled across Lanstein's stubbly face. Operation Rustock had begun.

Lanstein's employer, FireEye, is a Silicon Valley company that defends corporations and governments against targeted malicious software, or malware. FireEye's clients include Fortune 500 companies—Yahoo! (YHOO), EBay (EBAY), and Adobe Systems (ADBE), among them—and members of the U.S. intelligence community. The company had recently shut down some of the highest-profile spam-blasting organizations, winning recognition for imposing order on a generally disordered and unpoliced world.