To not as much fanfare as I thought the story deserved, news outlets covered the U.S. Department of Justice’s June 2 announcement that a coordinated multi-national effort had led to the actual arrest of some big-time Internet criminals, and the crippling of one of the Internet’s major botnets, if only for a short time.
The announcement was tempered by news that the botnet, known as Gameover Zeus, would only be disabled for a few weeks at best, after which time the at-large members of the international crime cartel that controls Gameover Zeus will have had time to rebuild the botnet and get back the work of ripping off the global population.
The bottom line for Internet users: you’ve got about two weeks to make sure your computers are not infected and part of the botnet’s command and control scheme. After that time, when the Gameover Zeus servers come back online, the Internet zombie attacks start all over again.
Botnets (as in, “roBOT NETworks”) are groups of computers scattered around the world that have gotten infected with some type of virus, or other malicious software, that allows the Internet bad guys to control them remotely, with the computers owners being none the wiser. Common chores and commands given to botnet-controlled computers (called, “zombies”) by their controllers include distributing all imaginable forms of Internet pornography; acting as spam email funnels; serving up viruses to infect other computers; and, ganging up with other zombies to launch mass assaults and hold hostage or shut down high-value websites, such as banks, gambling sites and other places that process lots of money. You may be kindest, gentlest, most loveable person on earth who would never hurt a fly, but if your computer has been made part of a botnet, you are also an accomplice in a global crime syndicate.
The Gameover Zeus botnet, estimated to control up to one million zombies, has been known to law enforcement authorities for almost three years, and was designed with one thing in mind: stealing bank account credentials. Once infected, the Zeus software just sits there, quietly waiting for someone to sign-in to an online bank account. As soon as they do, it sends the account holders username and password back to bad guy headquarters in Russia and Ukraine, adding them to the list of accounts that can be drained.
Gameover Zeus has been an extremely lucrative venture, netting hundreds of millions of dollars for its controllers. It was also a main distribution channel for Cryptolocker, a nasty piece of malware that can lockup your computer with a password and hold it hostage until you pay a ransom. Sadly, law enforcement authorities have already announced Gameover Zeus will be back, and have strongly encouraged computer users to use this brief respite to make sure their systems are clean and protected.
England’s Get Safe Online website (getsafeonline.org) is full of good advice on how to deal with problems like Gameover Zeus. Chief among the recommendations is the use of a high-quality antivirus scanner. My favorite, the free version of Avast Antivirus (avast.com) will serve you well. By the time you read this, there will only be one week left, so there is no time to waste.