botnet
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Google temporarily disrupts a botnet that infected 1 million PCs
On Tuesday, Google disclosed it recently disrupted a massive network of computers infected by Glupteba.
International law enforcement disrupts the notorious Emotet botnet
International law enforcement has disrupted and taken control of Emotet, one of the world's larger and more dangerous botnets.
DOJ announces guilty plea for 2016 cyberattack that broke the internet
More than four years after the Dyn cyberattack in 2016, we have a better idea of who was behind one of the most disruptive DDoS attacks in internet history.
Microsoft helped disrupt the infamous Trickbot botnet
Microsoft has confirmed that it and partners disrupted the Trickbot botnet in a bid to protect US elections.
US Cyber Command disrupted the notorious Trickbot botnet
The US Cyber Command, the Defense Department division in charge of its cyberspace operations, recently mounted an operation to disrupt one of the most massive and notorious botnets today. According to The Washington Post, CyberCom successfully (albeit temporarily) interrupted the Trickbot botnet’s operations at least a couple of times over the last few weeks. The botnet is composed of at least a million hijacked computers infected with the Trickbot malware and reportedly run by Russian-speaking criminals.
Microsoft disrupts a botnet that infected 9 million computers
Today, Microsoft and partners from 35 countries took steps to disrupt a botnet behind the world's largest cybercrime network. The botnet, Necurs, has infected an estimated nine million computers worldwide, and it's one of the largest spam email networks, generating as many as 3.8 million spam emails in a two-month period.
Researchers helped French police dismantle a crypto-mining botnet
It seems like every week there's news of a new piece of malware being used to steal user data or to take control of devices. For once, though, there's some good news in the war on intrusive software: A botnet which was spreading crypto-mining malware has been taken over by police and used to remove the malware from infected computers.
US will map and disrupt North Korean botnet
The US government plans to turn the tables on North Korea-linked hackers trying to compromise key infrastructure. The Justice Department has unveiled an initiative to map the Joanap botnet and "further disrupt" it by alerting victims. The FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations are running servers imitating peers on the botnet, giving them a peek at both technical and "limited" identifying info for other infected PCs. From there, they can map the botnet and send notifications through internet providers and foreign governments -- they'll even send personal notifications to people who don't have a router or firewall protecting their systems.
Kelihos botnet operator pleads guilty to hacking and fraud charges
The Kelihos botnet story appears to be winding to a close. Russian Peter Levashov has pleaded guilty to charges relating his operation of the botnet, including intentional damage to a computer, wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. He reportedly used Kelihos to spread spam email, collect login details, install ransomware and otherwise attack users' computers, including selling access to the botnet.
Russia denies planning botnet cyberattack on Ukraine
Russia has denied planning a major cyberattack that would disrupt soccer's Champions League final this weekend. Ukraine's SBU security service said on Wednesday that malware infecting hundreds of thousands of routers was the work of Russian hackers preparing for an assault on the country. The attackers were accused of targeting Saturday's match in Kiev. According to Reuters, the Kremlin has strongly denied these accusations.
FBI seizes domain behind major Russian botnet
The FBI has seized a domain linked to what's believed to be a Russian botnet composed of 500,000 infected routers around the world. According to the Department of Justice, the botnet -- that is, a network of computers infected with malware -- is under the control of Russian hacking group "fancy bear" or "Sofacy." Authorities believe the group was also behind the Democratic National Committee breach during the Presidential Elections in 2016. Sofacy reportedly use a malware called "VPN Filter" to exploit the vulnerabilities in home office routers manufactured by by Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link and QNAP.
Mirai botnet creators plead guilty to charges over 2016 attack
The individuals behind the Mirai botnet that caused nationwide internet outages in October of last year have pleaded guilty to federal charges, ZDNet reports. Paras Jha, Josiah White and Dalton Norman were indicted by a court in Alaska earlier this month and have pleaded guilty to charges that carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.
FTC lawsuit over D-Link’s lax router security just took a big hit
In January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took D-Link to court over its incredibly insufficient security. The FTC claimed that the company failed to protect its routers and IP cameras from unauthorized access, exposing them to use in botnet attacks or outside viewings of camera feeds. But this week, the FTC's case against D-Link took a hit as a judge dismissed three of the commission's six complaints.
Twitter porn bots drew in over 30 million clicks
For the past few months ZeroFOX, a social media-focused digital security company, has been looking into a massive pornography botnet targeting Twitter. Dubbed SIREN, after the mythical Greek creatures said to lure sailors to their deaths with song, the botnet campaign reportedly included around 90,000 accounts that produced over 8.5 million tweets.
Nastier version of IoT botnet could brick your smart toaster
Two new versions of a nasty botnet called BrickerBot were spotted in the wild by researcher Pascal Geenens, who reported the latest attack for security firm Radware. Permanent denial-of-service botnets like these can infect poorly-protected IoT devices like smart toasters and web-enabled vibrators to bring down various connected web servers. These new BrickerBot iterations use scripts with even more commands and almost four times as many actual attacks as previous iterations to completely overwhelm their targets.
Justice Department attacks global spam botnet after arrest
The Kelihos botnet is a global network of infected Windows machines that is used for all manner of nefarious cybercrime. That's enough reason for the Justice Department to want to wipe the network off the face of the Earth and prosecute its creator to the full extent of the law. Which is what the department believes it is doing, after releasing a statement confirming that it was behind the arrest of Peter Yuryevich Levashov.
How to adult at security
You're a grown-ass adult -- so stop using the same password for everything. Seriously, your cat's name followed by your birthday isn't fooling anybody. Don't be that guy (of any gender) who gets totally owned by ransomware. Pull up your big-person pants, walk with us through the baddies of threats and help yourself to our tips on how to totally adult your way through the nightmare that is modern computer security. Don't worry, you got this.
Russia used a cybercriminal's botnet for a spying campaign
It's no secret that the lines between state-sponsored hacking and cybercrime are fuzzy. After all, relying on professional crooks offers plausible deniability if the intruders are ever caught. However, it's now apparent that those lines sometimes disappear altogether. The New York Times reports that Russian intelligence 'piggybacked' on criminal hacker Evgeniy Bogachev's now-defunct botnet, GameOver ZeuS, to conduct spying campaigns in the US and abroad. Between 2011 and 2014, infected computers were asked to search for documents that clearly reflected Russian political interests, including US support for Syrian rebels, Ukrainian operations and English searches for "top secret" and "Department of Defense." Those last queries suggest that there were at least some American government or contractor systems that had been compromised, and they're definitely not what you'd expect from an outfit siphoning bank accounts.
When vending machines attack (a university)
We are marching toward certain doom at the hands of an angry Skynet of our own invention. Need proof? This week a school was attacked by its own soft drink vending machines. You read that right.
CRISPR, 'binge-watch' and 'botnet' are now in the dictionary
The vocabulary experts who decide which terms get added to the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary are at it again. Today, over 1,000 new words made the cut from fields like science, tech, medicine pop culture, sports and more. Among the new additions are CRISPR, botnet and binge-watch alongside microbiome, truther, SCOTUS and FLOTUS. Other notable new entries include Seussian -- of, relating to, or suggestive of the works of Dr. Seuss -- and the technical term for the inability to recognize faces: prosopagnosia. Merriam-Webster doesn't publish the full list of new additions, but you can take a brief survey via the source link below.
