[Arab News] US authorities claimed one of their biggest victories against cyber crime as they shut down a ring they said used malicious software to steal what experts estimate could top $100 million.A computer virus, dubbed Coreflood, infected more than 2 million PCs, enslaving them into a "botnet" that grabbed banking credentials and other sensitive data its masters used to steal funds via fraudulent banking and wire transactions, the US Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
The government shuttered that botnet, which had operated for a decade, by pulling the kill switch on five command and control centers after a federal court in Connecticut gave the go-ahead to take over the servers.
"This was big money stolen on a large scale by foreign criminals. The FBI wanted to stop it and they did an incredibly good job at it," said Alan Paller, director of research at the SAN Institute, a nonprofit group that helps fight cyber crime.
Security experts said the total losses suffered by the ring's victims were easily in the tens of millions of dollars and might top $100 million.
A civil complaint against 13 unnamed foreign nationals was also filed by the US district attorney in Connecticut. It accused them of wire and bank fraud. The Justice Department said it had an ongoing criminal investigation.
The malicious Coreflood software was used to infect computers with keylogging software that stole user names, passwords, financial data and other information, the Justice Department said.
"The seizure of the Coreflood servers and Internet domain names is expected to prevent criminals from using Coreflood or computers infected by Coreflood for their nefarious purposes," US Attorney David Fein said in a statement.
A botnet is essentially one or more servers that spread malicious software and use the software to send spam or to steal personal information or data that can be used to empty a victim's bank account.
US government programrs shut down the botnet on Tuesday by taking over its command and control center. They instructed the computers enslaved in the botnet to stop sending stolen data and to shut down. A similar tactic was used in a Dutch case, but it was the first time US authorities had used this method to shut down a botnet, according to court documents.
Victims of the botnet included a real estate company in Michigan that lost $115,771, a South Carolina law firm that lost $78,421 and a Tennessee defense contractor that lost $241,866, according to the complaint filed in the US District Court for the District of Connecticut.
The government plans to work with Internet service providers around the country to identify other victims.