On 8 April, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT), joined forces with the Dutch authorities and the FBI, and U.S-based representatives at the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force- International Cyber Crime Coordination Cell (IC4) along with private sector partners, to target the Beebone (also known as AAEH) botnet, a polymorphic downloader bot that installs various forms of malware on victims’ computers. Initial figures show that over 12,000 computers have been infected, however it is likely there are many more.
In the operation, led by the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit, the J-CAT’s Cyber Liaison Officers worked together with Europol officials and representatives from Intel Security, Kaspersky and Shadowserver. The botnet was ‘sinkholed’ by registering, suspending or seizing all domain names with which the malware could communicate and traffic was then redirected.
