Bulgaria has participated in a major international operation against Sality, one of the world’s longest-running criminal botnets, which has been used to distribute malware to infected computers worldwide.
Bulgaria has participated in a major international operation against Sality, one of the world’s longest-running criminal botnets, which has been used to distribute malware to infected computers worldwide, Europol said.
The coordinated operation was carried out on August 31 under the leadership of US authorities, with law enforcement agencies from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania taking part. Europol supported the operation alongside private-sector partners CrowdStrike and the Shadowserver Foundation.
Sality is believed to have been active for more than two decades. At its peak, the botnet gave its operator access to around one million infected devices worldwide. More than 11 million unique IP addresses have been linked to its infrastructure.
As part of the operation, communications from infected devices were redirected to controlled infrastructure. This isolated compromised computers from the botnet and rendered the communication channel used by its operator unusable.
Sality has been particularly difficult to dismantle because of its decentralised structure. Unlike traditional botnets that depend on a central command-and-control server, infected devices within Sality communicate directly with one another. As a result, disabling individual parts of the infrastructure does not necessarily bring down the entire network.
Efforts to disrupt Sality have required years of international cooperation. Europol has supported law enforcement agencies in identifying and dismantling infrastructure linked to the botnet since 2017, as different parts of the network were located in different jurisdictions.
Cooperation intensified in the weeks ahead of the latest operation, with partners holding weekly operational meetings. Europol also helped coordinate measures taken by authorities in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania against the botnet’s infrastructure in their respective jurisdictions. | BGNES
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