Feds Asserts: Coreflood Botnet Destructed

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) accustomed the Federal court of cleansing 19,000 PCs infected with Coreflood bot malware according to report published in thewhir on June 23, 2011.

The effort was mobilized only after the green signal of the US Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut was passed to seize 29 domain names used in connection to the botnet and were asked to redirect traffic from the botnet's servers to an FBI controlled-server.

The FBI also attained a provisional restraining order that permitted it to send a command to Coreflood-infected PCs that would stop the botnet from operating.

This move signifies a part of the massive legal campaign that strives towards eradicating one of the oldest and most precarious malware viruses created.

Coreflood infects personal computers by exploiting the Windows operating system while causing massive destruction in computers of large organizations and businesses. These botnet enters into a system on being downloaded through clicking a pop-up or a link found on an unreliable website.

Since 2002, botnet (Coreflood) had infected more than two-million Windows machines. The FBI revealed that during a 11-month period starting in March 2009, Coreflood hacked about 190 GB worth of banking passwords and additional susceptible data from more than 413,000 infected users as they browsed the net.

Finally, on June 21, 2010, the civil lawsuit was closed by the Government, when authorities were opposed from operating Coreflood. The names of the defendants were concealed by the authorities.

The FBI also claimed of withdrawing the substitute server used in issuing commands to the botnet and further the size of the same had been reduced by more than 95%.

FBI Special Agent, Kenneth Keller while commenting on the withdrawal of the substitute server notified its necessity for preventing the defendants from using the Coreflood botnet and spreading the wire fraud further, reports computerworld on June 23, 2011.

Keller also accredited the antivirus companies that had helped them with distribution detection and deletion signatures in occasions, where Coreflood was unable to update itself, which further assorted towards subduing the botnet.

Related article: FTC Reaches Million-Dollar Settlement For Spyware

» SPAMfighter News - 7/4/2011