There really isn’t that much media coverage regarding technological crimes. Sure, the occasional major hack or data leakage is talked about in the news for a day or two, but that’s pretty much it. Well, just so you know, international law enforcement agencies are actually fighting their own war on crime. And they finally yielded success in one of their battles, as Dorkbot botnets temporarily offline due to international law enforcement.
- Dorkbot is a family of malware that spreads through instant messaging, social media channels, USB removable drives, and websites like Facebook and Twitter
- Once Dorkbot malware is installed, a backdoor is opened on infected computers, allowing remote access and even turning the host computer into a botnet
- The worm became famous in late 2011, after an attack on Facebook’s chat system, having the users receive a message with a fake link that seemed to originate from one of their friends
- A team composed of international law enforcement agencies, along with Microsoft, worked together to stop the group
Wil van Gemert, the Europol deputy director of operations, claimed that because the virus affected people world-wide, it was important not only that a joint team would be the one to take the group down, but also working with a part of the private sector that was also affected – Microsoft.
Seizing all of the group’s domains, and shutting off all of the botnets, the team was finally able to temporarily stop all of the group’s activities; however, nobody knows for how long this will last, as the group has most likely already started to spread an upgraded version of the malware worm.
The taskforce was composed of members of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Europol the Interpol. This is the second joint operation of this magnitude, as in March a team comprised of members from Italy, Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom worked together in an operation in order to take down what was at the time the world’s biggest botnet operation, known as Ramnit.
At the time, Ramnit was so dangerous that it had compromised 3 million computers worldwide, and it was still present in 350,000. Since they were able to take the group down back then, perhaps the team will be again as successful and manage to take down Dorkbot for good.
Image source: Wikimedia
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