FBI closes in on Zombie botnet gang

14 Apr 2011

The FBI is closing in on the gang behind the Zombie botnet, the Coreflood malware attack that recruited 2.3m machines for the theft of passwords and credit card information.

In a world first, the FBI has succeeded in taking over the criminals’ servers after receiving permission from a judge to carry out the sting, according to the BBC.

The FBI has been able to order the malware to shut down and has logged the IP addresses of compromised machines.

FBI takes control over botnet’s servers

The criminal gang in question are understood to have recruited 2.3m machines and raked in millions of dollars.

The FBI has succeeded in seizing five of the botnet’s servers that were controlling thousands of infected machines. Officers have also seized 29 domain names.

By taking over the botnet’s servers, the FBI can issue commands to stop the malware execution on compromised machines.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

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