10:03 ET<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nUS crime-fighters are closing in on a gang behind a huge botnet after taking control of the criminals’ servers.<\/p>\n
It is the first time FBI investigators have used such a method.<\/p>\n
The US Justice Department had to seek court permission from a judge to carry out the sting.<\/p>\n
It enabled the authorities to issue its own commands, effectively ordering the malware to shut down. It also logged the IP addresses of compromised machines.<\/p>\n
It means the authorities will be able to notify ISPs about which machines have been infected and ISPs in turn can let victims know that their machines had been taken over.<\/p>\n
A similar approach was used last year by Dutch police as part of its shutdown of the Bredolab botnet.<\/p>\n
At the time, privacy experts questioned the legality of such a move.<\/p>\n
Millions recruited<\/span><\/p>\nA botnet is a network of infected computers, also known as zombie PCs.<\/p>\n
Coreflood, the malware program prompting the FBI investigation, has been around for at least a decade and can record key strokes, allowing criminals to take over unsuspecting computers and steal passwords, banking and credit card information.<\/p>\n
It is believed to have recruited around 2.3 million machines and raked in millions for those behind it.<\/p>\n
Officials have not said where the attacks came although it appears consistent with cybercrime activity in Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n
Investigators seized five of the botnet’s servers that were controlling hundreds of thousands of infected machines.<\/p>\n
They also seized 29 domain names used by the botnet.<\/p>\n
“As a result the zombie machines in the Coreflood network are being re-routed to communicate with the server controlled by law enforcement agencies,” explained Noa Bar Yosef, a senior strategist at security firm Imperva.<\/p>\n
“The ‘good’ server can then issue commands to stop the malware execution on the compromised machines.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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