FBI-led Operation Duck Hunt shoots down Qakbot

Uncle Sam today said an international law enforcement effort dismantled Qakbot, aka QBot, a notorious botnet and malware loader responsible for losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide, and seized more than $8.6 million in illicit cryptocurrency. In a Tuesday press conference announcing the take down, US …

[claimed]

Good

But the precedent is terrifying under a certain light

[Clausewitz4.0]

Re: Good

More terrifiying than NSA blowing up Iranian nuclear centrifugues with a virus? Nahhh...

[claimed]

Re: Good

Yea, kinda - because I don’t think they blew up, and they were also on foreign soil and in violation of ‘international law’. Not the same as redirecting traffic and installing executables on domestic servers.

I’m glad they did it in this instance, but now there is a precedent for “we don’t like this software, we will remotely terminate it - cos judge”. Think about peer to peer networks, mirrors, or software updaters for e.g. Huawei

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good

One crucial difference between this and remote-terminating other software is that this software was installed without the knowledge or permission of the computer owners and users, and whose purpose and use was strictly malicious.

[Anonymous Coward]

A classic bit of Windows botnet malware

> Qakbot is a classic bit of Windows botnet malware .. can be used to backdoor infected computers, steal their passwords and monitor keystrokes, siphon funds from online bank accounts, and more.

Jessica, do the malware writers have a valid license from Microsoft /s

[aerogems]

C'mon!

El Reg's hacks couldn't find a single image of the old Duck Hunt game with the dog sniggering to use with this article?

[rafff]

$48M losses ... $8.6M recovered

Nuf said

[MrReynolds2U]

Re: $48M losses ... $8.6M recovered

also, what was the cost of this operation?

[Clausewitz4.0]

Re: $48M losses ... $8.6M recovered

"also, what was the cost of this operation?"

Probably waaaaay more than 8.6M. Just a political show of force, not actually a true win.

[Tron]

Basically, proof...

...that the NSA and their chums can do absolutely anything they want on your tech, whenever they want, anywhere on the planet. So if a US company launches a product that you were working on, before you do, it probably wasn't a coincidence.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Did they warn the infected users...

... with a popup asking them to contact a phone number in India to get rid of the malware?