Feds Charge 16 Russians Allegedly Tied to Botnets Used in Cyberattacks and Spying

International investigators, as part of a large-scale special operation, exposed and partially defused a Russian cybercriminal network that infected computers with Qakbot, Danabot, Conti and other malicious programs.

Feds charge 16 Russians allegedly tied to botnets used in cyberattacks and spying

The hacker ecosystem in Russia, more than perhaps anywhere else in the world, has long blurred the lines between cybercrime, state-sponsored cyberwarfare, and espionage. Now an indictment of a group of Russian nationals and the takedown of their sprawling botnet offers the clearest example in years of how a single malware operation allegedly enabled hacking operations as varied as ransomware, wartime cyberattacks in Ukraine, and spying against f…

Suspects behind DanaBot that hit 300K computers named

: And the associated fraud'n'spy botnet is about to be shut down

DanaBot malware operation seized in global takedown

A global collection of private defenders and law enforcement agencies notched another win against a core facilitator for cybercrime, initiating coordinated seizures and takedowns of DanaBot’s command and control servers, disrupting the malware-as-a-service’s operations, the Justice Department said Thursday.  Federal officials also unsealed a grand jury indictment and criminal complaint charging 16 individuals for their alleged involvement in the…

Oops: DanaBot Malware Devs Infected Their Own PCs

The U.S. government today unsealed criminal charges against 16 individuals accused of operating and selling DanaBot, a prolific strain of information-stealing malware that has been sold on Russian cybercrime forums since 2018. The FBI says a newer version of DanaBot was used for espionage, and that many of the defendants exposed their real-life identities after accidentally infecting their own systems with the malware. DanaBot’s features, as pro…

About this writes The Guardian.As noted, law enforcement officers from the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, France, Denmark and the Netherlands.According to the investigation, hackers from Russia and related structures infected more than 300 thousand devices in the USA, Europe, Australia, Poland, India and Italy. The purpose of the cyberattackers was to steal data, blackmail, as well as cyber espionage against government, diplomatic and military instit…