M00p Virus Cyber Attack Revealed

Investigation of the 2006 malware creating massive havoc and turbulence led the law enforcement officials to take creators of m00p virus behind the bar, reports softpedia on October 6, 2011.

However, Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos showed personal interest on investigating the matter at Detective Constable Bob Burls' of the UK's Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) and during presentation at the Virus Bulletin in Barcelona recently. This led to a series of arrest of several suspects of the m000p virus.

Even though a lot of hacking attacks were suffered by users from various institutions, but Constable Burls was surprised to find the cyber hit on a hospital. However, on further investigation, it was discovered that the botnet used were being controlled by a registered domain holding the address warpiglet@gmail.com

On scrupulous investigation further deep into the matter revealed that the mastermind behind the hack was a security company, Opton-Security, owned by Matthew Anderson.

However, in a 2006 raid by British and Finnish police led the suspects of the cyber attacks to jail. The log report signified Anderson to be the administrator of the M00p IRC server and Artturi Alm as his co-ordinator, who had an open IRC connection to the M00p IRC channel.

In the raid, police found compromised pictures of female victims, who left their webcams on unknowingly and even private chat logs were revealed to raise further eye brows. In one such matter as revealed from the chat logs, Anderson was reportedly found guilty and arrogant while snapping the pictures of a girl in her private time, who later on burst into tears on discovering that her computer had been hacked.

However, Alm reportedly seemed to be an articulate criminal who embedded his social security number in some of the malware distributed by the group and also tattooed his arm with his online nick name "Okasvi".

Though the M00p operation could finally be closed down after the series of imprisonment, but members from other countries including Canada, Finland, France, Italy, Kuwait, Scotland, and the US, still prevails.

Related article: MU Students Received phishing E-mail

» SPAMfighter News - 10/15/2011