Law enforcement agencies in Europe and the US have separately announced two of the biggest ever takedowns of ‘botnet’ cybercrime networks.
The European law enforcement agency Europol said in a statement that its Operation Endgame was “the largest ever operation against botnets”.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ), meanwhile, announced that its own operation involved the dismantling of a huge network of 19 million hijacked devices known as 911 S5, which it described as “likely the world’s largest botnet ever”.
A botnet is a network of infected computers that can be used to control the computers as a group without the owners’ knowledge.
They can be used to send spam, harvest data or even delete personal data from affected computers.
Europol said that botnets play a major role in the deployment of ransomware, and the two operations combined shut down networks that had defrauded victims of billions of pounds.
Numerous arrests were made in the US and Europe
Europol’s Operation Endgame targeted a number of notorious ‘droppers’, including IcedID, SystemBC, Pikabot, Smokeloader, Bumblebee and Trickbot.
Droppers are a type of malicious software or malware used to install further malware on the target system.
While the various droppers had different approaches and effects, they were all used to deploy ransomware and were seen as a vital link in the infection chain.
The Europol operation saw four arrests, more than 100 servers taken down or disrupted, and more than 2,000 domains taken under control.
The US DoJ operation saw the arrest of Chinese national YunHe Wang and the seizure of assets including a Ferrari, luxury watches and 21 properties.
Nicole Argentieri, DoJ principal deputy assistant attorney general, said that Wang was behind malware that “compromised millions of residential computers around the world”.
She added that access to the infected computers was then sold to criminals who used them to carry out a “wide array” of cybercrimes.
These included harassment, child exploitation, bomb threats, and the fraudulent theft of “billions” from financial institutions and government programmes.
The BBC reports that Wang has been charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud, substantive computer fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
If convicted, he could face decades in prison.
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