Cyber attacks are an increasingly common and sophisticated practice in the digital world. However, one of the most used malware in Brazil and the world was deactivated by the FBI.
The malicious botnet was used to hack into accounts, commit financial fraud and carry out other cybercrimes. In Brazil, Qakbot stole data and financial credentials.
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On August 29, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced that the US agency had managed to dismantle Qakbot's infrastructure in an international operation. “The FBI has neutralized this far-reaching criminal supply chain, nipping it in the bud,” Wray said.
In the United States alone, malware attacked financial institutions, government companies and healthcare companies.
In some cases, hackers charged millions of dollars to return the victims' system or data. The police action managed to seize around US$9 million from cyber attacks.
During the investigation, the FBI identified that the criminal system already had access to more than 700,000 computers around the world, 200,000 of which in the United States alone.
To be able to extinguish the scheme, the entire investigative operation was supported by different security departments around the world, with the support of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Latvia and UK.
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The entire practice of Qakbot, or Qbot, was carried out through phishing, “spam emails that contained malicious attachments or links,” says the FBI statement.
Thus, when the user downloaded the file, the malware infected the computer without the person knowing about the criminal action.
According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Qakbot botnet was created in 2008 and has since been has been used to commit several cybercrimes that have generated millions of dollars in losses due to world.
Christopher Wray also says that the action of the virus provided the digital infrastructure that criminals needed and the control of “hundreds of thousands of computers used to carry out attacks against individuals and companies around the world”, explains the director of the FBI.
The entire capture action FBI was done by redirecting traffic to protected servers that instructed Qakbot to be uninstalled.
Even after the security action, Wray believes that cyber threats are increasingly complex and dangerous. However, he also considers US cybersecurity forces to be increasingly better structured.
