Europol Leads International Crackdown on Notorious Network Zombie Viruses

TapTechNews June 2nd, Europol of the European Police Office has recently joined forces with the police forces of dozens of countries and regions such as the United States and the United Kingdom to launch the Operation Endgame crackdown against several notorious network zombie viruses. During the period from May 27th to 29th, more than 100 servers were shut down, more than 2000 domain names were seized, 4 suspects were arrested, and 8 suspects were issued global warrants for arrest.

According to the explanation of Eurojust of the European Judicial Organization, this security operation mainly eradicated zombie networks such as IcedID, Pikabot, Smokeloader, Bumblebee and Trickbot. Among them, Trickbot (or TrickLoader) is claimed to be one of the oldest zombie networks. And IcedID was originally a financial Trojan horse. Later, due to the large number of infected devices, it gradually became a zombie network cluster, mainly providing chicken and springboard services for hackers to spread malicious Trojan software/DDoS.

TapTechNews learned that the police mainly used the Sinkhole trapping technique combined with the previously known hacker team information to carry out synchronous online and offline pursuit. The crackdown launched by the police in May is said to be only the first stage of the Operation Endgame. The relevant law enforcement departments stated that they have joined hands with partners to continue investigating the criminal acts of more hackers, and will conduct the largest zombie network removal action in history in the future.