Microsoft has said it was part of a team that dismantled an international network of zombie bots.

The tech giant Microsoft said that they were a part of a program that put an end to an international network of zombie bots. The network named “Necurs” infected in over 9 million computers across the world and it is among the world’s largest botnets.

Stealing personal information and transmitting fake pharmaceutical emails were among the criminal scams that Necurs was responsible for. How the cyber criminals make use of the botnets? They use them to remotely take control of devices connected to internet installing malicious software.

Necurs could send spam, gather the information about activities running in your computer and delete the information without owner’s knowledge. Microsoft worked with their partners in 35 other countries for 8 long years planning to eradicate Necurs, Tom Burt the vice-president for customer security and trust in Microsoft said. He added that the criminals using this network will no longer be able to use its key elements of infrastructure in executing cyber-attacks.

A Botnet is

They are the networks of internet connected devices with automated tasks running on them. The cyber criminals are sending malware which allow them to get remote access to computers through these networks. When malware enters the target computers, the criminals can take the information from them and also they can use the malware infected devices to send more attacks.

Once a device has been infected, and used to send more spam or malware attacks, it is known as a zombie. A malware infected devices or an infected device used to send more attacks is known as a zombie.

How did the takedown work?

Necurs first appeared in 2012.

It is believed to have had a network of more than nine million zombie computers. After Necurs’s first appearance in 2012, it went on to make more than 9 million computers zombies. Necurs used a domain generation algorithm that was able to create random domain names to grow this zombie network.

Microsoft with their partners was able to crack this algorithm of Necurs and they were able to predict the domain names that Necurs would use in the upcoming months. They they went on and blocked them.

Protect your computer from malware.

Here are some signs to an malware infected computer.

• Programs operate slowly and they will take more time to open. • The computer crashing regularly causing restarts. • The hard drive fills up without warnings. • Spam emails would be send from your account

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51828781