SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the in-search-of-electronic-"brains!" dept.
Microsoft takes down millions of zombie bots:
Microsoft has said it was part of a team that dismantled an international network of zombie bots.
The network call Necurs infected over nine million computers and one of the world's largest botnets.
Necurs was responsible for multiple criminal scams including stealing personal information and sending fake pharmaceutical emails.
[...] Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice-president for customer security and trust, said in a blog post that the takedown of Necurs was the result of eight years of planning and co-ordination with partners in 35 countries.
He wrote that the steps taken will "ensure the criminals behind this network are no longer able to use key elements of its infrastructure to execute cyber-attacks."
[...] Necurs first appeared in 2012.
It is believed to have had a network of more than nine million zombie computers.
To grow this network Necurs used a domain generation algorithm that created random domain names the group turned into websites. It used these sites to send instructions to its army of infected computers.
Microsoft and its partners were able to crack Necurs' algorithm and predict what domain names it would be using in the months ahead and block them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @08:01PM
I still find it strange that criminals and their bots can freely register thousands of fake domains. Meanwhile I get stonewalled trying to update my one, legit domain. The whole ICANN registry thing needs to be rethought and reimplemented.