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Crime Security

Police Dismantle World's 'Most Dangerous' Criminal Hacking Network (reuters.com) 31

International law enforcement agencies said on Wednesday they had dismantled a criminal hacking scheme used to steal billions of dollars from businesses and private citizens worldwide. Reuters reports: Police in six European countries, as well as Canada and the United States, completed a joint operation to take control of Internet servers used to run and control a malware network known as "Emotet," authorities said in a statement. "Emotet is currently seen as the most dangerous malware globally," Germany's BKA federal police agency said in a statement. "The smashing of the Emotet infrastructure is a significant blow against international organized Internet crime."

German police said infections with Emotet had caused at least 14.5 million euros ($17.56 million) of damage in their country. Globally, Emotet-linked damages cost about $2.5 billion, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine's General Prosecutor said police had carried out raids in the eastern city of Kharkiv to seize computers used by the hackers. Authorities released photos showing piles of bank cards, cash and a room festooned with tangled computer equipment, but did not say if any arrests were made.

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Police Dismantle World's 'Most Dangerous' Criminal Hacking Network

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  • Not really (Score:5, Informative)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @11:09PM (#60999998)

    They did get the C&C server and used that to do something about existing infections. That is good.

    But (at least from reporting in Germany but the "FAZ") they did not get the people behind this, just two low-level admins that took care of the network infrastructure of the C&C server. The real people behind this still have all the code and tools at their disposal. Hence they can just start this up again, possibly in a more resilient version. I do hope they get them though and they may have enough evidence now to identify those people. But this is not over yet.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      And in any case the world's most dangerous criminal hacking network will be one of the state sponsored ones, e.g. NSA, GCHQ, FancyBear (Russia) etc.

      • by Armonk ( 5413686 )

        And in any case the world's most dangerous criminal hacking network will be one of the state sponsored ones, e.g. NSA, GCHQ, FancyBear (Russia) etc.

        is fancybear the same as cozybear or are they actually 2 seperate russian gov hacking groups?

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  • by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Wednesday January 27, 2021 @11:41PM (#61000072)

    Dangerous is killing people. Inconvenient is stealing money and wrecking hardware.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      They were laundering money for people who were killing other people for profit, through crypto currency. Which is exactly how they got caught, by tracking crypto currency transaction as the authorities started buying criminal stuff with all the crypto they have been confiscating (it boomerangs back to them when they snag those they tracked and they confiscate it back, plus some more and spend it elsewhere to buy more criminal stuff and track the transaction to the supplier. All your transactions are done on

    • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:09AM (#61000536) Homepage Journal

      With ransomware crippling hospitals, killing someone is just a matter of time.

      • With ransomware crippling hospitals, killing someone is just a matter of time.

        But they would have died anyway (sooner or later), so what's the harm?

        I joke, I joke. Bad one, I know.

    • by fazig ( 2909523 )
      In this age and with how interconnected we've become with electronics it's not just a couple of people that can't look at pictures of cats and dogs for some hours. Or 'rich' people having some of their money stolen or their computers wrecked. Cyber criminals like these are not modern-day Robin Hoods. A lot of lives do depend on computers working properly. And if such critcial systems get compromised it's little different than say setting a fire in a hospital.



      I'm usually against death penalty.

      But I thi
    • Don't you know? Everything in America is made out of money and for money. Americans ARE money!

      Just like Germans ARE Mett [youtube.com] aka Hack [youtube.com]. ;)

    • Several german hospitals had to disconnect from the emergency call dispatchment. Nobody died directly from Emotet, but an ambulance not being accepted at a hospital is somewhat dangerous.
  • It's really a F article. Have to reach the very bottom to read where the F servers were.
  • ILE PHOTO: he keyboard of a computer is pictured at a computer shop in Ciudad Juarez, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez no joke!
  • Is it really more dangerous than WSB?
  • No arrests ? Ahh heck, they will be back !!!
  • Cyberwow! It cybeeevolved! It can cybersay "Internet" instead of "cyber" now!

    Cyberapplause! This is a happy cyberday!

  • ...has to rent new servers, it never stops.

Your password is pitifully obvious.

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