EUROPOL has struck a blow to the underground botnet community with the largest ever dropper-ecosystem takedown! Over 100 servers that hosted droppers including IcedID, SystemBC, Pikabot, Smokeloader, Bumblebee and Trickbot!
Over a dozen locations were searched in 4 European countries and over two thousand domains were seized.
Droppers play a key role in malware propagation. They are small programs, often distributed via phishing, trojans or malicious websites, that facilitate the downloading (ie. ‘dropping’) and installation of complex malware packages. They essentially open the victim’s door to hackers.
Undermining this support infrastructure should put a dent, even if it is temporary, in malware distribution.
Great job to EUROPOL, Danish Police France’s Cybercrime Unit, FBI, and many other law enforcement groups that participated!
