Cybersecurity Researchers Team Up to Combat Online Crime

Microsoft employees and federal marshals raided command centers in Pennsylvania and Illinois used by criminals to run a botnet, a cluster of infected computers used to steal personal and financial information from millions of victims. Then a separate group of cybersecurity researchers based in San Francisco quietly took down another botnet using more technical means.

The five researchers, from four security firms — Crowdstrike, Dell SecureWorks, the Honeynet Project and Kaspersky Labs – worked together to decrypt and successfully commandeer the so-called Kelihos.b botnet that was using over 100,000 infected computers to blast pharmaceutical spam and, in some cases, steal Bitcoins, a virtual currency that is impossible to recover once stolen. The two takedowns were not timed to coincide with one another, nor were the two groups even aware they were operating in tandem. But they point to a renewed effort by technologists to take the lead in combating digital crime rather than waiting for law enforcement authorities to take action.