The Justice Department says the FBI was able to “disrupt” malware that had infected more than 700,000 computers across the world.
“The FBI led a worldwide joint, sequenced operation that crippled one of the longest-running cybercriminal botnets,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a Tuesday press release.
“With our federal and international partners, we will continue to systematically target every part of cybercriminal organizations, their facilitators, and their money — including by disrupting and dismantling their ability to use illicit infrastructure to attack us,” Wray continued. “Today’s success is yet another demonstration of how FBI’s capabilities and strategy are hitting cyber criminals hard, and making the American people safer.”
The malware, named Qakbot, turned victim computers into part of a “botnet” or “a network of compromised computers, meaning the perpetrators can remotely control all the infected computers in a coordinated manner,” the Justice Department said.
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