Russian Botnet Glupteba Targeted India For Maliciously Mining Cryptocurrency

Aniket Jain 2021-12-13 10:12

The sophisticated botnet uses blockchain technology to protect itself, allowing it to recover more quickly from disturbances, according to Google.

Google has shut down Glupteba’s “key command and control infrastructure” and filed a lawsuit against its operators, according to a blog post. Gluten is a botnet that has infected over one million Windows devices worldwide.

The tech firm stated, “We anticipate this move will have a major impact on Glupteba’s operations.”Glupteba’s operators are expected to deploy a backup command and control method based on data encoded on the Bitcoin blockchain to reclaim control of the botnet.”

Two Russian persons are named in Google’s lawsuit as being behind the botnet’s operations. “If successful, this action would impose real legal liability for the operators,” Google said, adding that it has also filed a temporary restraining order to boost its technical disruption attempt.

The botnet is known for stealing user credentials and data, mining cryptocurrency on infected servers and setting up proxies to reroute other people’s internet traffic through infected PCs and routers, according to Google.

A botnet is a collection of machines that have been infected with malware and are now under the control of hackers who can use them for harmful purposes.

Google has been watching Glupteba since 2020 and discovered that it was being distributed on a variety of third-party software download, online movie streaming, and video downloader sites, typically marketed as “free downloads,” according to the company’s lawsuit.

The Alphabet-owned company claimed it has terminated over 63 million Google Docs related to the spread of Glupteba, as well as 1,183 Google Accounts, 908 Cloud Projects, and 870 Google Ads accounts.

Conclusion

The botnet network, which Google defines as a “modern, borderless electronic incarnation of organized crime,” was allegedly used for illegal purposes, including the theft and unauthorized use of Google users’ logins and account information, according to Google.

It wants Starovikov and Filippov to pay damages and be barred from using Google services indefinitely.

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