military’s operation sought to temporarily disrupt Trickbot by hijacking its command and control servers to send out updates to all infected computers. Cyber Command to disrupt the same group of cybercriminals, said the center. The action coincides with an offensive in recent weeks by U.S. The Center on National Security at Fordham Law said in a statement that while Microsoft did not have evidence that the botnet ringleaders intended to seek to disrupt the election, “the firm said it was concerned about the botnet’s potential to be used to fuel confusion, perhaps by freezing voter registration systems in the lead-up to the election.” “While a ransomware attack wouldn’t change votes and could only lock up machines, the chaos stirred by a cyberattack could create uncertainty about the outcome of the results,” said CNET. Botnets are networks of computers secretly infected by malware that can be controlled remotely.Īccording to The Washington Post, the botnet is “run by Russian-speaking criminals” and poses a “theoretical but real” threat to election integrity by launching ransomware attacks, in which data is rendered inaccessible unless the victim pays a ransom, said Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president of customer security and trust.Ĭybersecurity experts have raised concerns about ransomware attacks casting doubt on election results. The company obtained an order from a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia that gave Microsoft control of the Trickbot botnet, a global network it describes as the largest in the world. “Adversaries can use ransomware to infect a computer system used to maintain voter rolls or report on election-night results, seizing those systems at a prescribed hour optimized to sow chaos and distrust,” said Microsoft in a statement. Microsoft took legal action on Monday to disrupt a botnet called Trickbot, “one of the world’s most infamous botnets and prolific distributors of ransomware,” which many feared was preparing to cast doubt on the results of the U.S.
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