Category: General|Aug 30, 2023 | Author: Admin

Ingenious FBI trick deleted spyware from 700,000 machines

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• attack
• bot
• spyware
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The FBI has finally managed to crack the botnet Qakbot, which has been running for a long time. It was actually discovered as early as 2008.

This is how the FBI cracked Qakbot

So long that the people behind it managed to infect 700,000 machines globally before it was all over.

 

The botnet connected to machines across the US (over 200,000) – the East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast were affected, including machines used in mission-critical operations.

 

It was classic e-mail phishing that allowed the perpetrators to do so much damage: e-mails were mass sent with a link.

 

Clicking on the link installed malware, including hijacking. In addition, the machines thus joined a centralized botnet to utilize the power.

 

Routed them for uninstall

Botnets are nothing new, but the size this time is scary. It is also interesting how the FBI cracked this: by routing Qakbot machines to the FBI's servers. The FBI servers then executed software on the machines that deleted the malware and removed them from the botnet.

 

The operation, which took place in the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Latvia, and the UK, is one of the largest US-led disruptions of a botnet infrastructure used by cybercriminals to commit ransomware, financial fraud, and other cyber-criminal activity.

 

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