German authorities reported today the dismantling of the world's largest network of robots aimed at fraud and theft of data on the Internet after a four-year investigation in which they have participated 41 Countries.
As explained by the Prosecutor's Office of Verden (Northern Germany) in a statement, have been seized 39 servers and hundreds of thousands of domains and has been identified to 16 persons suspected of participating in the direction of the network in ten countries, focused on online banking customers.
Seven of these suspects already have a prison order issued by the German justice system, accused of fraud and of constituting a criminal organization.
In an appearance before the media, the German Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière, showed his satisfaction with an operation “unprecedented” Against criminal networks in cyberspace.
Investigators link suspects to infrastructure “Avalanche”, dedicated at least since 2009 to the “phishing” (the sending of fraudulent emails to get hold of private user data) and spam campaigns (spam).
They estimate that each week the botnet could send up to a million emails with harmful files or fraudulent internet addresses through which they infected the recipient's computer and became part of the network “Avalanche”.
Their main target was customers of banks that did paperwork on the Internet and were scammed. 5.000 euros on average each, according to the Verden Prosecutor's Office.
According to the complaints filed, it is estimated that the money defrauded by this network is around 6 million euros in 1.336 criminal acts, although the actual damages will be much greater.
Only in Germany did the network manage to control the computers of more than 50.000 victims.
The FBI has participated in the investigation with Germany, the U.S. Department of Justice and judicial authorities of 39 countries around the world.
With the support of the European offices of Eurojust and Europol, raids have been carried out in ten countries.
As reported by the Prosecutor's Office of Verden, the suspects identified come from ten different countries so it will not be possible to bring them all before the German justice in the absence of extradition agreements.
Fountain: The World