Spain joins Europol and Microsoft to battle destructive 'botnet' virus
Sunday, December 6, 2015 @ 9:18 PM
SPAIN has joined a Europol team working with Microsoft to fight a dangerous new computer virus which works its way through firewalls and steals financial information.
Other major companies have clubbed together through the European Centre against Cyber Crime (EC3) and Joint Action Cyber Crime Team (J-CAT)to combat the so-called Win32/Dorkbot, one of the most extensive IT bugs circulating.
Networks of IT 'robots', or 'botnets', of which Dorkbot is one, have affected over a million computer users all over the world, says Europol operations sub-director Wil van Gemert.
Dorkbot is a worm spread through malicious links sent through social networks, email, instant messaging or infected USB devices and, once a computer is infected via the back door, remote hackers can exploit the system by stealing online payment data, launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and fill the computer with malware.
Once a hacker is able to get into a system by running a Dorkbot, he or she will be able to download and run files from given URLs, obtain log-in data and passwords through POP3, FTP, Firefox or Internet Explorer cached passwords and usernames, and redirect or block websites or domains such as security pages.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com