On the 7th of December, Google moved to take legal action against a crypto-jacking botnet that has reportedly compromised the security of more than 1 million devices around the world.
The botnet called Glupteba acted as sophisticated malware - it would find its way into a cryptocurrency mining machine, hijack its operations, and gather data. Then, this data would be sold off to third parties, or used for other malicious purposes, while Glupteba would mine cryptocurrencies for the creators of the botnet.
Speaking of which, Google has sued Alexander Filippov, Dmitry Staroviko, and 15 additional individuals, in relation to the botnet.
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Google worked with Chainalysis, a crypto confidentiality company, in order to shut down the operations of the said botnet. In a blog statement put out by the former company, a spokesperson argued that Glupteba utilized the decentralization aspect of Bitcoin in order to become much harder to track and shut down.
Following that, Chainalysis explained that Glupteba was the first-ever botnet to be able to weaponize a blockchain in the way that it did. In layman’s terms, the company behind the botnet would send the malware to new servers, and by using command-and-control servers on the Bitcoin blockchain, would be able to avoid getting caught.
While the lawsuit has been filed, Google also emphasized that there’s no effective way to shut down the botnet, indefinitely, without targeting the blockchain-based infrastructure that it utilizes.
