The campaign amounts to “the most significant technological and financial operation ever led by the DOJ against a botnet,” United States Attorney Martin Estrada said. | Jose Luis Magana/AP PhotoSenior Justice Department officials on Tuesday revealed a major digital sting they carried out to quash malware cybercriminals have used for decades to launch ransomware attacks, break into corporate networks, and filch sensitive consumer data across the globe.
Botnets — short for robot networks — refer to vast webs of computers that are infected with a common piece of malicious software. Cybercriminals control the botnets via a hub-and-spoke-like web of computer servers, which can then issue commands to the infected machines, harnessing their combined computing power to stage cyber attacks, breach corporate networks or illicitly harvest data.
Cybercriminals infected 700,000 new victims with the malware over the past year alone, roughly 200,000 of which were in the U.S., according to U.S. law enforcement. They also used it to launch 40 different ransomware attacks, causing $58 million in damages. Given how long it has been operating and the financial nature of the crimes QakBot is associated with, it is likely that many cybercriminals from across the world have contributed to or rented services from the botnet.