Bredolab Trojan Botnet Dismantled


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10/26/2010



Bredolab Trojan Botnet Dismantled

Kevin R. Smith
Co-Editor


After infecting what's estimated to be 30,000,000 computers, the Bredolab Trojan, one of the worst ones ever to see the light of day, has been dismantled.

According to the official press release about dismantling the Bredolab Trojan Botnet from the Dutch authorities,

At the request of the Dutch Public Prosecution Service, Armenian police arrested the probable mastermind behind the criminal Bredolab botnet network at the international airport in Yerevan today.

A piece at The Register about the Bredolab dismantling describes the outcome saying, Infected machines remain pox-ridden but the command system associated with the cybercrime network has been decapitated, following an operation led by hi-tech police in The Netherlands.

That's good news, and clearly, capturing this individual and dismantling Bredolab is a big deal. Both the size and and horrible effects of this trojan make its destruction an especially big deal.

The Register piece goes on to say, Bredolab allow[ed] criminals to capture bank login details and other sensitive information from compromised machines, has infected an estimated 30 million computers worldwide since its emergence in July 2009.

This means if your computer has an infection, you'll need to take action immediately, including:

  1. contact your bank(s)
  2. contact your credit card(s)
  3. run a full antivirus scan of your PC
Once Bredolab was taken apart, the authorities used the botnet to send Bredolab infection notifications to the infected PCs.

One last thought: if you find you've gotten a notification like the one above, you might be well served to contact your financial institutions by phone for the time being so you can be sure your personal and financial information is safe 'til you can be certain you've gotten complete virus removal and your computer is clean.

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