Europol’s European Cyber crime Centre (EC3), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a group of technology industry companies including Microsoft and A10 Networks have apparently disrupted the "rampant" ZeroAccess botnet.
Also known as Sirefef, the botnet is responsible for infecting more than 2 million computers, specifically targeting search results on Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines, and is estimated to cost online advertisers $2.7 million each month.
Microsoft reported that the operation is expected to significantly disrupt the botnet’s operation, increasing the cost and risk for cyber criminals to continue doing business and preventing victims’ computers from committing fraudulent schemes.
“This operation marks an important step in coordinated actions that are initiated by private companies and, at the same time, enable law enforcement agencies around Europe to identify and investigate the criminal organizations and networks behind these dangerous botnets that use malicious software to gain illicit profits,” said Troels Oerting, head of the EC3.
Due to its botnet architecture, ZeroAccess is one of the most robust and durable botnets in operation today and was built to be resilient to disruption efforts, relying on a peer-to-peer infrastructure that allows cyber criminals to remotely control the botnet from tens of thousands of different computers. The botnet is used to commit a variety of crimes, including search hijacking and click fraud.
“The coordinated action taken by our partners was instrumental in the disruption of ZeroAccess; these efforts will stop victims’ computers from being used for fraud and help us identify the computers that need to be cleaned of the infection,” said David Finn, executive director and associate general counsel of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit.
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