Cybercrime network called "Avalanche", which has been known for being one of the world´s largest botnet infrastructures and the sender of almost a million of malware-infected emails every week, was shut down thanks to a calculate operation between international law enforcement agencies and many security experts , who managed to arrest five suspects and block over 800,000 domains.
The Internet Could Also Be A Very Harmful Weapon
According to the International Business Times, the law enforcement and the Europol reported that the massive network targeted over 40 major financial institutions, and involved an estimated of 500,000 infected computers around the world every single day. Giving this situation, the vice president and general manager of Norton EMEA, Nick Shaw explained that Avalanche showed how powerful the weaponisation of the internet is, and how many hackers and cyber criminals easily build networks of malware-infected bots.
Naturally, this is a very delicate issue, since nowadays cyber strikes are executed very easily all around the world, whether to regular persons or major institutions as banks, powerful websites or even systems related to important organizations. This is a problem that far from getting decreased, it has raised in the last years to the point in which it has been considered one of the biggest threats that society is facing right now.
Law Enforcements Needs To Work With The Private Sector
According to Infosecurity Magazine, the European Commissioner for the Security Union, Julian King, stated that the success of the operation between the international law enforcements and security experts not only show the capacity to fight against the most power cyber criminals organization, but also the way in which the authorities need to work along with the private sector in order to make this happen in the easiest way, since this is an issue that could only be prevented with major cooperation as this kind.
Although the threat of a cyber strike will not be avoided because of this operation, it's a fact that what the law enforcements and security experts did, could work as a message for hackers organizations that keep committing crimes, considering that Avalanche was one of the most important exponents of this group.
