‘Operation Tovar’ Targets ‘Gameover’ ZeuS Botnet, Crypto Locker Scourge
Summary: The U.S. Justice Department announced an international law enforcement operation, dubbed "Operation Tovar," to seize control of the Gameover ZeuS botnet, which infects an estimated 500,000 to 1 million Windows systems globally. The effort involves the FBI, Europol, the UK's National Crime Agency, security firms including CrowdStrike, Dell SecureWorks, Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee, and academic researchers at VU University Amsterdam and Saarland University in Germany.
Why it matters: Gameover has been implicated in the theft of more than $100 million in account takeovers, and its operators are believed to be a core group of hackers from Russia and Ukraine who used the botnet in corporate account takeovers often punctuated by DDoS attacks meant to distract victims from noticing the thefts.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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