Pursuing Koobface and ‘Partnerka’
Summary: A report by Nart Villeneuve details Koobface, a large network of hacked computers compromised mostly through social engineering scams spread among Facebook users, whose operators generated over two million dollars in a one-year period. The report traces Koobface's activity through payments to criminal partners known as Partnerka and lists the nicknames and earnings of top affiliates, while noting that notifications were delivered to owners of abused infrastructure ahead of a planned takedown.
Key Takeaway: The Koobface operators pulled in more than two million dollars in a single year by intercepting victims' search queries and pushing rogue security software, and the report's publication of affiliate nicknames and earnings is the kind of raw data that can disrupt large-scale criminal operations while those implicated remain at large.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Phishing & Social Engineering
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