The US Justice Department is moving to declare the “game over” for Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, the alleged criminal ringleader behind the notorious GameOver Zeus botnet.
Since 2011 GameOver Zeus — which is a variant of the original Zeus Trojan that first circulated in 2007 — has infected between 500,000 and one million businesses and consumers, and funneled over $100 million into the coffers of cyber criminals. The malware typically infected victims through corrupt drive-by websites and spear phishing campaigns, and then proceeded to steal account numbers and credentials via a keylogger before routing them to botnet servers.
Interestingly, authorities from multiple countries actually didn’t set out to disrupt the GameOver Zeus botnet. Rather, their mission was to seize servers linked to Cryptolocker, an especially nasty type of ransomware that forced thousands of victims to hand over hundreds of dollars in order to liberate their encrypted computers. In just 60 days, Cryptolocker is believed to have raked in over $27 million.
Bogachev was charged in a US federal court on June 2 with conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. However, he is thought to be living in Russia, and if so will likely avoid fines and imprisonment in the US if found guilty, given that there is no formal extradition treaty between the two nations.
While Bogachev’s fate is unclear, one thing is certain: there are many other botnets out there that haven’t yet been disrupted — let alone identified — and even more, more precarious botnets are on the way. And even though methods exist by which to disrupt the botnets or shut them down, the cyber criminals will do everything in their power to bring them back online. While there’s no way to stop botnets, there is a way to defend against them.
Seculert’s Advanced Threat Protection Platform features botnet interception technology that analyzes botnet communications, and identifies all infected users and endpoints — regardless of whether they’re inside the corporate network or connecting remotely. Our customers also identify malware infections that have already breached their legacy security defenses, yet have gone undetected.
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The post Botnet, GameOver ZeuS, Disrupted & Ringleader Charged appeared first on Seculert Blog on Advanced Threats and Cyber Security.
