World's Most Dangerous Malware Botnet Defeated

Law enforcement agencies from all around the world partnered up to take down Emotet, the biggest malware botnets in the world. After two years of efforts, the FBI, Europol, UK's National Crime Agency and others were able to effectively map Emotet's infrastructure to track the money behind it.

The malware botnet starts by getting access to its victims' computers using malicious email attachments and then sells it to criminals who are able to install more dangerous malware.

While Emotet was first identified as a banking Trojan in 2014, it evolved into a point of entry for other types of malware and ransomware, according to Forbes.

Europol claimed that it was "one of most significant botnets of the past decade" and one that opened doors to computer systems all across the world, as reported by BBC.

Nigel Leary, Deputy Director of the UK's National Cyber Crime Unit also explained that"Emotet was instrumental in some of the worst cyber attacks in recent times and enabled up to seventy per cent of the world’s malwares including the likes of Trickbot and RYUK."

It was also reported that Emotet sent out 100,000 malicious emails per day on average using several hundred servers around the world. A database of email addresses, usernames and passwords was also discovered as part of the investigation.

The law enforcement authorities still need to track down those who were behind Emotet to completely eliminate chances of its possible resurrection.