many cyber security experts claim that conficker was created to form a huge botnet, a large collectionuters controlled remotely by cyber criminals to steal, among other things, financial and identity data. software technology companies and government agencies regarded the threat as being so great that they collaborated to form the conficker working group, a unique effort to neutralize the botnet and closely track its movements. [ticking] coming up: the new american heroes. >> if you look at, like, the focus groups or whatever, people say, "savior," and "they saved me," and "they saved my data." "this stuff's irreplaceable." >> hi. >> the geek squad makes a house call, next on 60 minutes on cnbc. [ticking] ♪ [ male announcer ] how could switchgrass in argentina, change engineering in dubai, aluminum production in south africa, and the aerospace industry in the u.s.? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. it's just one reason over 70% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus o

microsoft waited for months watching a botnet called zero access that infected millions of computersrd. with the help of fbi, law enforcement overseas and a court order microsoft attacked on thursday, cutting off act es ses to servers primarily based in europe. microsoft investigators targeted zero access botnet because it fraud anti-ly bills $2.7 million a month with online advertisers with link bait. to get a sense how many computers are affected on daily basis, look how many were targeted december 1st and 2nd alone. 22% in the u.s. 8% of those computers were in india. 6% in italy. turkey, 5%. 47% were in other countries. about there. so if you're wondering why microsoft is investing so much on counterattacks because it has to defend its own products. the binge search engine, bing ad exchanges and windows are prime targets according to the company. as digital ad business grows experts say there are more opportunities for criminals to slip in and take opportunities. digital ad spend something expected to rise 14.9% year on year to $43.2 billion according to e marketer. digital losse

on botnets, for instance, how can you track the movement of where they are going? they seem to have moved into data centers. what we know about that and what that might suggest, and what are we seeing in terms of results of the implementation of the kidns of things they have suggested? if you find you are in some kind of disagreement on meeting those standards, do you foresee a regulatory scheme? >> i would not want to presume a hypothetical. i would hope we would be working with industry to identify what needs to be done. much like we are going to announce today on the cell phone unlocking, we sat with industry and said, here is a problem, it has got to be solved. by the way, we will have metrics on that. that is the preferable first approach. that is the approach we are taking. >> when you say that, if i hear you correctly that means you are at least contemplating a regulatory scheme of some sort beyond just the voluntary, here is our metrics, try to do the best? >> that is the right question, but the key word is "contemplating." i have talked repeatedly about wh