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The Pony botnet has been identified as a digital wallet thief, done so by Trustwave’s SpiderLabs, which detailed its findings in a recent blog post. The botnet is known to … Continue reading

Microsoft has announced that it has disrupted the ZeroAccess botnet with help from the FBI, Europol, and industry partners. Microsoft says that this is the third time this year that it and its partners have disrupted dangerous botnets that affect millions of people each day. The ZeroAccess botnet is also known as the Sirefef botnet. […]

Virtual crime can lead to very real damage, and the European Parliament knows this well enough to have just issued a draft directive toughening up the EU’s penalties for internet-based violations. Get caught running a botnet and you’ll face a minimum of three years in prison; dare to attack critical infrastructure and you may spend five years behind bars. Don’t think of hiring someone for corporate espionage, either — the directive makes whole companies liable for online offenses committed in their name. EU nations will have two years to adopt the directive as law, although an existing, unofficial agreement suggests that at least some countries won’t wait that long to enforce the new rules.

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Via: Reuters

Source: European Parliament

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it took down 1,400 Citadel botnets with the help of the FBI, and now Ballmer and Co. have divulged just how big of an impact the effort had. According to Richard Domingues Boscovich, the firm’s Digital Crimes Unit assistant general counsel, the operation freed at least 2 million PCs across the globe from the malicious code — and that’s a conservative estimate by his reckoning. It’s believed that more than $500 million has been stolen from bank accounts thanks to information gleaned from keystrokes logged by computers afflicted with the software. Though the chief botnet organizer is still on the loose and many machines are still burdened by Citadel, Domingues Boscovich says they “feel confident that we really got most of the ones that we were after.”

[Image credit: Edmund Tse, Flickr]

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Source: Retuers

It turns out Microsoft was serious when it declared war on botnets: the company just announced that its Digital Crimes Unit has successfully disrupted more than 1,400 criminal networks. The company says the action was a coordinated effort between Microsoft and the financial services industry, noting that the FBI chipped in to help out with legal hurdles — giving Redmond the leverage it needed to shut down malicious servers in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. These machines had been infecting computers with Citadel malware, a keylogger that allowed cyber criminals to skim account information from victims. According to Reuters, authorities don’t yet know the identities of the criminals involved, but Microsoft thinks the ringleader lives in eastern Europe, and may be working with 80 or more accomplices. The company has already filed a civil lawsuit, listing the lead hacker as “John Doe No. 1” in the complaint.

Microsoft says it will use the data it collected from the operation to help ISPs find more efficient ways to detect and notify users if their computer is infected. The company also pledges to make the information available through its own cyber threat intelligence program. Check out the firm’s full press announcement for yourself after the break.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft

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Source: Reuters