Operation Avalanche Cleans Up Major Criminal Network

[frogboy]

Law enforcers and industry players have teamed up to take down infrastructure supporting at least 20 malware families, in the culmination of a four-year investigation.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office Verden and the Lüneburg Police in Germany partnered with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the US Department of Justice and FBI, Europol, Eurojust and vendors including Symantec and Bitdefender in Operation Avalanche.

Monetary losses from the network are thought to run into the hundreds of millions, as it supported banking Trojans, ransomware and more, including Goznym, Marcher, Dridex, Matsnu, Pandabanker, Cerber and Teslacrypt, according to Bitdefender.

Victims were identified in over 180 countries.

The operation this week involved investigators from 30 countries and resulted in 221 servers being taken offline and 800, 000 domains being seized, sinkholed or blocked, Europol revealed.

Further, five people were arrested, 37 premises were searched and 39 servers were seized.

Julian King, European commissioner for the Security Union, claimed the operation shows what can be done with cross-border co-operation.

“Cybersecurity and law enforcement authorities need to work hand in hand with the private sector to tackle continuously evolving criminal methods,” he added. “The EU helps by ensuring that the right legal frameworks are in place to enable such cooperation on a daily basis".

Full Story. Operation Avalanche Cleans Up Major Criminal Network

 

[jamescv7]

Not a bad move although so many big fish that still circulated like main source of producing ransomware or even exploits.

With so many modernized tools, the investigation should be quicker than before unless protectors are there to delay it.