If you have been keeping up with the technology news lately you may have noticed a trend growing, the FBI is getting fed up with hackers, scammers, and virus creators. Today in the latest string of massive arrests the FBI came down on a group of users spreading the elusive Gameover Zeus Botnet virus. The estimated damage from this particular virus was estimated to be over 100 million dollars.
The Zeus botnet is designed to run without alerting the end user of anything fishy going on, all the while it is funneling stolen information, such as your bank account, between computers all the way back to the operator of the botnet. Along with stealing information the Zeus virus also opens your computer up to other malicious attacks that can be perpetrated at a later time. The FBI suspects that 500,000 to 1,000,000 users worldwide are infected with the virus. FBI Executive Assistant Director Anderson was quoted as saying “Gameover Zeus is the most sophisticated botnet the FBI and our allies have ever attempted to disrupt.”
The man in charge of operating the botnet was indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh, he goes by the monikers lucky12345, slavik and pollingsoon. His real name is Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev. Bogachev and is also the leader of a Russian/Ukrainian cyber terrorist group that spreads viruses like this and the dreaded cryptolocker.
The department of justice has gone out of their way to create a website to help those who think they are infected.
