U.S. Government Takes Down Coreflood Botnet
The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI this week were granted unprecedented authortiy to seize control over a criminal botnet that enslaved millions of computers and to use that control to disable the malicious software on infected PCs.
The target of the takedown was “Coreflood,” an infamous botnet that first emerged almost a decade ago as a high-powered virtual weapon designed to knock targeted Web sites offline. Over the years, the crooks running the botnet began using it to defraud owners of the victim PCs by stealing bank account information and draining balances.
