The global Necurs network of zombie bots has been taken down by a multi-national team.
The botnet is one of the largest in the world, and has been behind attacks on more than 9-million computers, using them for cyber-attacks like phishing email, fake pharmaceutical ads and stealing users’ personal data.
Botnets are created when hackers take remove control of connected systems, installing malware and then using those computers to steal data, modify information or send fake mails.
Taking down the Necurs botnet was the result of eight years’ of work co-ordinated across 35 countries, according to Tom Burt, vice-president of customer security and trust at Microsoft, which was part of the team that took the network down.
The first Necurs attack was reported in 2012.
The botnet used domain generation algorithms to grow its network, then turned arbitrary domain names into websites and used them to send spams or malware to the attacked computers.