Researchers claim they have broken into the Kraken botnet, one of the world's largest, but that they can not bring it down.
3Com's TippingPoint researchers, whose researchers say they have accessed the botnet, claims it can eradicate all the malware on installed computers and disinfect computers.
However, they will not do it, saying it would be unethical to do so.
By monitoring the incoming communications of the server they discovered about 25,000 infected machines in one week.
Cody Pierce, a security researcher for Tipping Point, said: "We listened and collected statistics for a week, and filtered out [for] the IP addresses and then the systems."
Mr Pierce managed to write coding to redirect the malware away from the infected PCs, but this was where the ethical considerations came into place.
David Endler, the director of TippingPoint's DVLabs, said while it would help 99 per cent of the cases, he was concerned about the "one per cent of corner cases" from "a corporate liability standpoint".
According to the recent Global Threat Report, published by McAfee, malware is getting "more sophisticated and multinational".
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