In a recent blog post, Google said it had disrupted a botnet that infected more than 1 million devices, and also said it would launch a lawsuit against the operators of this botnet.
According to CNET, a botnet usually refers to a network of computers that are taken over and controlled remotely by cybercriminals. Once they take control, these computers can be used for a variety of illegal schemes, such as denial of service attacks.
Google said that a botnet called Gupteba has infected Windows machines around the world. Over the past year, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has been working with the company’s CyberCrime Investigation Group (CIG) to stop botnet activity related to malicious bots. Google services.
“We terminated approximately 63 million Google Docs files, 1,183 Google accounts, 908 cloud projects, and 870 Google Ads accounts that distributed Gupteba,” TAG’s Shane Huntley and Luca Nagy said in the blog post..
However, Gupteba’s operators are using the blockchain bitcoin as a fallback mechanism for the botnet, which means that it will be difficult to completely eliminate the botnet. In Google’s complaint, the company alleges criminal conspiracies against Gupteba Enterprise, including stolen accounts, credit card fraud, and crypto-jacking.
This year, more than 2,600 cases of botnet command and control software were identified by Spamhaus Malware Labs, an international non-profit organization dedicated to monitoring spam and related cyber threats. Compared to about 1,400 botnets identified at the same time last year, there was an 82% increase, which represents a significant increase in botnet activity in 2021.