FBI and European agencies take down Russia’s most sophisticated hacking network
The FBI and European law enforcement agencies say they have taken down a massive network of hacked computers that were used to defraud thousands of people out of millions of dollars.
The Department of Justice seized over $8 million in cryptocurrencies from hackers and removed the code from an unspecified number of “hacked” computers in the US and around the world.
“This is a serious blow to the Russian-speaking hacking gang’s Qakbot hacking application, which has been causing harm to people and government agencies around the world for years,” a spokesperson for the Department said.
The operation can be considered the latest achievement in the FBI’s aggressive efforts to crack down on known hacking tools that allow cybercriminals to take millions of dollars out of Americans’ pockets.
“This is a concerted effort to target services that other cybercriminals are using around the globe,” a senior FBI official said in an interview.
The tool the FBI targeted in this case, known as a botnet, is an army of infected computers that hackers often use for a variety of scams. It’s an inexpensive way to amass digital power that can knock critical services like schools or healthcare providers offline.
Qakbot has been active for about 15 years, but the use of the tool by gangs of hackers seeking ransom added urgency to law enforcement efforts to penetrate the group’s infrastructure.The investigation culminated late last week, when the FBI redirected the botnet’s Internet traffic through computer servers controlled by the bureau and then issued commands to some infected computers to uninstall the malicious software.
