Researchers Take Down Koobface Servers
Security researchers, working with law enforcement and Internet service providers, have disrupted the brains of the Koobface botnet.
Late Friday afternoon, Pacific Time, the computer identified as the command-and-control server used to send instructions to infected Koobface machines was offline. According to Nart Villeneuve the chief research officer with SecDev Group, the server was one of three Koobface systems taken offline Friday by Coreix, a U.K. Internet service provider. "Those are all on the same network, and they're all inaccessible right now," Villeneuve said Friday evening.
Coreix took down the servers after researchers contacted U.K. law enforcement, Villeneuve said. The company could not be reached immediately for comment. The takedown will disrupt Koobface for a time, but for any real effect, much more will have to happen. Machines that are infected by Koobface connect to intermediary servers -- typically Web servers that have had their FTP credentials compromised -- that then redirect them to the now-downed command and control servers.
