Operation Magnus: Global criminal investigators smash major malware platform
Investigators from Europe and the USA, among others, have taken a malware platform offline. It distributed the infostealers Redline and Meta worldwide.
(Image: Oleksiy Mark/Shutterstock.com)
The "Operation Magnus" task force has struck a major blow against a global malware network. It is one of the largest malware platforms in the world. The Dutch police, the FBI and criminal investigators from Australia were among those involved.
Infostealer attacks
According to a press release, the EU's judicial cooperation agency Eurojust coordinated the investigation. Among other things, three servers in the Netherlands were taken out of service. The police also arrested two suspects in Belgium. The investigators have also shut down the criminals' communication channels. The announcement reads as if the entire network has not yet been paralyzed.
Videos by heise
According to the investigators, the criminals distributed the Redline and Meta infostealers to millions of victims worldwide via their malware network. Trojans of this type are designed to obtain log-in data from victims. These are then often offered for sale on the Darknet. This includes data such as usernames and passwords of online accounts, cookies and wallets for cryptocurrency. Such data is used for fraud and espionage, among other things.
Successful strike
The investigators state that they are in possession of the criminals' internal data. This includes IP addresses, passwords and source code of the Infostealers. They now intend to analyze the data to further the investigation. They warn the criminals about this in a video on a website created especially for Operation Magnus. It can be assumed that the investigators will take further servers offline and arrest people in the coming days.
Eset provides an online scanner to check systems for Redline and Meta infections.
(des)
