US Police Disrupt Cryptolocker Infrastructure

Police in the US have said they have the man responsible for the Cryptolocker and GameOver Zeus.  A worldwide police operation has been successful in disabling the infrastructure behind the Cryptolocker ransom malware attack.  Not only that, but they have filed a criminal complaint against the Russian citizen that is alleged to have masterminded the operation.

Police have also taken over large areas of the botnet which the GameOver gang was using, and have redirected its traffic. During the process, police claim to have unearthed Evgeniy Mikhaylovich Bogachev, the person accused of being the leader of the group and the creator of the original Zeus malware (Zeus infects computers and grabs banking info). Another version of Zeus, called GameOver Zeus is the malware that was being used to spread the Cryptolocker code.  The Cryptolocker malware hijacked approximately one million machines, encrypting their files and then demanded Bitcoin to restore them to their original state.

Police claim that Bogachev, who lives in the Black Sea town of Anapa, aka “Lucky12345″, “Slavik”, and “Pollingsoon”, wrote the original Zeus Trojan and the group collected more than $100 million, including ransoms that were paid by large firms, banks and police departments. The gang used a “botnet” of infected machines, which the police managed to reprogram. “We took control of the bots, so they would only talk with our infrastructure,” said Dell expert Brett Stone-Gross, who assisted the FBI, according to Reuters.

The global operation involved authorities in Pennsylvania US, as well as in the Ukraine, where police seized and copied command servers belonging to the group. Thankfully, the law enforcement agencies involved freed around 300,000 computers from the botnet. During this process, agents located Bogachev in online chats claiming authorship of the malware.

Disappointingly, although charged with the crime, Bogachev might not face trial, because there is no extradition agreement in place between the US and Russia.

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[Image via dailymail]

SOURCE: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/global-police-disrupt-cryptolocker-alleged-mastermind-146630