Internet News – Great news from the FBI and Police, as they cracked, shutdown and busted, one of the largest ever botnets in history.

Cyber Carnage

Cyberspace is safer today after FBI teams, internet security firms and cops shutdown an operation of cybercriminals involving 12 million zombie computers. They also arrested 3 individuals who have been called the Kingpins of the crime ring.

The bust was in regard to the Mariposa botnet, which had been involved in taking control of up to 12.7 million computers around the world. 190 countries have seen the effects of Mariposa, with credit card details, account passwords, bank details and all kind of business and personal information being stolen.

It spread like wildfire and was first discover in May 2009, but was eventually caught up on in late December 2009.

The attacks by the botnet have cost an undisclosed amount of money and untold damage to the identity of millions of people globally.

VPN Mistake

What had made the cybercriminals difficult to catch was the network of VPN proxies that had been being used. Hosted IP’s make it difficult to track, but once investigators had hooked a small fish, the bigger one bit soon after.

It was when investigators captured the Mariposa in its tracks, when the one of the originators panicked and used his own VPN from home to reassert his authority on the malicious software. Netkairo as the leader is known was arrested, which led to the other arrests later.