AVAST and French police neutralize large cryptocurrency botnet

The French police managed to find and neutralize a large server that controlled nearly a million virus-infected computers around the world. Details of the operation were disclosed by specialists from AVAST.

The fight against the Retadup virus has been carried out by the competent authorities for quite some time. This is malicious software that infected the system and mined cryptocurrency. It turned off the power of the processor, and in some cases opened access to other viruses.

Since the advent of Retadup has already hit the United States, Russia, Central and South America. By joint efforts of specialists from AVAST and French law enforcement authorities, it was possible to identify the vulnerability of the virus on the malware management server.

French police helped get a copy of the malicious management and control server. Based on this, AVAST created its own version of the server, which "treated" infected computers. In total, more than 850,000 infected computers worldwide were saved.

“With the help of the virus, hackers earned cryptocurrency for several million euros. Such operations against malware distributors are extremely difficult to implement and law enforcement officers rarely manage to implement them,” said Jean-Dominic Nollet, head of the French police cybersecurity unit.