The Qakbot botnet has suffered a major setback after its infrastructure was heavily disrupted by US and European law enforcement agencies. Operation DuckHunt, as it was codenamed, is possibly the largest US-led financial and technical disruption of a botnet infrastructure.

Not only did the agencies shut down the core of the Qakbot infrastructure, they also cleaned the malware from infected devices. US authorities also seized around 8.6 million dollars-worth of illicit cryptocurrency profits.

Qakbot has been active for over a decade and allowed the botnet operators to steal login credentials from affected devices as well as install additional malware on them. Often that malware included a ransomware variant, with Black Basta the most recent ransomware of choice.

Thanks to that, Black Basta repeatedly made it to the top three most prolific ransomware variants in our monthly ransomware reviews.

The international investigation involved judicial and law enforcement authorities from the US, France, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, and the UK. The examination of the seized infrastructure uncovered that the malware had infected over 700,000 computers worldwide. Law enforcement detected servers infected with Qakbot in almost 30 countries in Europe, South and North America, Asia and Africa, enabling the malware’s activity on a global scale. Of the 700,000 infected devices, around 200,000 were located in the US.

On impounded servers that belonged to the botnet’s infrastructure the authorities found 6.43 million email addresses and passwords that have now been shared with HaveIBeenPwnd (HIBP). HIBP allows you to search across multiple data breaches to see if your email address or phone number has been compromised. But HIBP has also assisted governments, such as the UK, Australia, and Romania (to name a few), in monitoring for breaches in government domains. 57% of the Qakbot related email addresses were already in the database. The Qakbot data has been labeled sensitive, which means you’ll have to verify the email address is under your control to receive the information.

The information was also shared with Spamhaus which will contact email providers and other hosts of affected email addresses to initiate a password reset to further protect the owners of those addresses.

Qakbot is mostly spread through phishing campaigns that include malicious documents as attachments or links to download malicious files. Once Qakbot is installed, the malicious code is injected in the memory location of a legitimate Windows process to avoid detection. At first, it searches the infected machine for email addresses and other useful information. Then it persists in the memory of the device to await further instructions, for example to download additional malware.

So, one characteristic of a botnet is that the bots can be controlled by the operators. Based on that principle, the FBI came up with a method to uninstall the malware from all the connected bots.

Once the FBI got hold of the administrators’ computers, they were able to map out the botnet’s Command & Control (C2) structure and use this information to roll out a special removal tool. The FBI managed to lock out the Qakbot administrators of their own command and control infrastructure by changing the encryption keys used to communicate with the servers.

“To disrupt the botnet, the FBI was able to redirect Qakbot botnet traffic to and through servers controlled by the FBI, which in turn instructed infected computers in the United States and elsewhere to download a file created by law enforcement that would uninstall the Qakbot malware.”

Additional information and resources, including for victims, can be found on the following website, which will be updated as additional information and resources become available: www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/divisions/national-security-division/qakbot-resources.

How to avoid ransomware

• Block common forms of entry. Create a plan for patching vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems quickly; and disable or harden remote access like RDP and VPNs.
• Prevent intrusions. Stop threats early before they can even infiltrate or infect your endpoints. Use endpoint security software that can prevent exploits and malware used to deliver ransomware.
• Detect intrusions. Make it harder for intruders to operate inside your organization by segmenting networks and assigning access rights prudently. Use EDR or MDR to detect unusual activity before an attack occurs.
• Stop malicious encryption. Deploy Endpoint Detection and Response software like Malwarebytes EDR that uses multiple different detection techniques to identify ransomware, and ransomware rollback to restore damaged system files.
• Create offsite, offline backups. Keep backups offsite and offline, beyond the reach of attackers. Test them regularly to make sure you can restore essential business functions swiftly.
• Don’t get attacked twice. Once you’ve isolated the outbreak and stopped the first attack, you must remove every trace of the attackers, their malware, their tools, and their methods of entry, to avoid being attacked again.

Malwarebytes EDR and MDR remove all remnants of ransomware and prevents you from getting reinfected. Want to learn more about how we can help protect your business? Get a free trial below.

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