US disables global botnet that infected 2 mn PCs

14 Apr 2011

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In one of the most comprehensive enforcement actions ever undertaken by American authorities, the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday disabled an international botnet, part of a massive fraud scheme, that had infected two million computers in the US.

The DoJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) filed a civil complaint, executed criminal seizure warrants and issued a temporary restraining order (TRO), as part of the comprehensive enforcement action to disable the botnet, a network of hundreds of thousands of computers infected with a malicious software program known as Coreflood.

The program, which installs itself by exploiting a vulnerability in computers running Windows operating systems, allows infected computers to be controlled remotely for the purpose of stealing private personal and financial information from unsuspecting computer users, including users on corporate computer networks, and using that information to steal funds.

The US attorney's office filed a civil complaint against 13 persons, accusing them of engaging in wire fraud, bank fraud and illegal interception of electronic communications. Search warrants were obtained for computer servers throughout the country, and a seizure warrant was obtained for 29 domain names.

The government also obtained a TRO, authorising it to respond to signals sent from infected computers in the US in order to stop the Coreflood software from running, preventing further harm to hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting users of infected computers.

''The seizure of the Coreflood servers and Internet domain names is expected to prevent criminals from using Coreflood or computers infected by Coreflood for their nefarious purposes,'' said US attorney David B. Fein for the District of Connecticut. ''I want to commend our industry partners for their collaboration with law enforcement to achieve this great result.''

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