A specially formed cyber team from the France police has reportedly conducted a special operation in August this year to destroy a botnet server which was suspected to be controlling over 850,000 viruses-infected Microsoft Windows Computer systems.
Yes, you’ve have read it right!
C3N which happens to be a special judicial unit of the National Gendarmerie and related to cybercrime analysis is said to have participated in the operation to destroy a server located in the area of Paris. The police units claim that the server was acting as a controlling hub to millions of botnets across the world which were infected by a specially devised virus to launch cyber attacks.
C3N chief Jean Dominique Nollet confirmed the news to BBC and said that some hackers who might be funded by an adversary fraudulently infected 850,000 computers since last year. If they started a cyber attack campaign such as a DDoS attack, then it would have been massive firepower sufficient to knock down all or most of the government websites on the planet.
A source from the French Police team reports that the botnet server located in Paris managed to sneak a specially devised Retadup virus into thousands of Windows computers across 100 countries- most of them located in North and South America and some in Europe.
Hackers managed to send the Retadup Virus through emails and some Adult content-based websites that advertised quick money by clicking on the fraudulently devised banners.
The objective of the campaign was to infect computers with viruses and make them into cryptocurrency ( Monero) mining systems or Distributed denial of service(DDoS) attack launching platforms, ransomware spreading systems and espionage devices to threaten people and make money.
As the operation was conducted secretly, the info did not leak to media outlets immediately after success.
