MOSCOW, September 11 - RAPSI, Vladimir Yaduta. Microsoft recalled the lawsuit against Russian programmer Andrei Sabelnikov, who was accused of creating a major botnet, a source close to the proceedings told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI/rapsinews.com) on Monday.

The parties have managed to reach an agreement on the settlement of the conflict, he said.

Igor Gushchev, a partner in Duvernoix Legal law firm and Sabelnikov's representative in Russia, confirmed that the negotiations with the corporation were over and abstained from any comments. He said that the parties will be issuing official comments at a later point.

Sabelnikov stands accused of having created the Kelihos botnet code. A botnet is a network of computers whose security has been compromised by malware and which can thus be collectively controlled by an external source. The Kelihos network was comprised of over 40,000 computers, which were infected by way of spam, malware, and child pornography.

Thanks to Microsoft, Kaspersky Lab and Kyrus Inc., Kelihos' activity was successfully shut down in September 2011.

Sabelnikov was the second defendant in the case which Microsoft initiated last October. The first defendant was Dominique Alexander Piatti, the owner of the dotFREE Group SRO domain registration firm. According to Microsoft, his company delegated 3,200 territorial subdomains in the "cz.cc" zone to Sabelnikov, who used them to manage the botnet network and reap profits from the software.

Microsoft was ready to apply for a default judgment if the parties failed to resolve the issue in the nearest future. The corporation maintains that from the moment when Sabelnikov was notified about the lawsuit in February, the parties held a number of negotiations, including via electronic correspondence, to resolve the issue.

Sabelnikov previously published an open letter in his blog denouncing all of Microsoft's accusations against him.