Microsoft and Partners Cut Off Key Trickbot Botnet Infrastructure

Microsoft Takes Down a Risk to the Election, and Finds the U.S. Doing the Same

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Microsoft takes down a risk to the election, and finds the U.S. doing the same:

Microsoft and a team of companies and law enforcement groups have disabled - at least temporarily - one of the world's largest hacking operations, an effort run by Russian-speaking cybercriminals that officials feared could disrupt the presidential election in three weeks.

But as soon as Microsoft began dismantling the operations last week, seeking to cripple a network of infected computers known as TrickBot that has been used to paralyze computer systems with ransomware attacks, it discovered that someone else was trying to do the same thing.

In a separate but parallel effort - which was apparently not coordinated with Microsoft - U.S. Cyber Command, the military cousin to the National Security Agency, had already started hacking TrickBot's command and control servers around the world late last month, according to two government officials.

Microsoft and Partners Cut Off Key Trickbot Botnet Infrastructure - Help Net Security

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Microsoft and partners cut off key Trickbot botnet infrastructure - Help Net Security:

Two weeks after someone (allegedly the US Cyber Command) temporarily interrupted the operation of the infamous Trickbot botnet, a coalition of tech companies headed by Microsoft has struck a serious blow against its operators.

"We disrupted Trickbot through a court order we obtained as well as technical action we executed in partnership with telecommunications providers around the world. We have now cut off key infrastructure so those operating Trickbot will no longer be able to initiate new infections or activate ransomware already dropped into computer systems," sharedTom Burt, corporate VP, Customer Security and Trust, Microsoft.

[...] "While our work might not remove the threat posed by TrickBot, it will raise the cost of doing business for the criminal gang behind the botnet because they will be forced to divert resources away from exploitation activities in order to rebuild the parts of their infrastructure that we disrupted," the Black Lotus Labs team noted.

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