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Zeus Botnet Dealt a Blow As ISPs Troyak, Group 3 Knocked Out

Posted by timothy on from the brief-respite-while-sauron-regroups dept.

itwbennett writes "Ninety of the 249 Zeus command-and-control servers were knocked offline overnight when two ISPs, named Troyak and Group 3, were taken offline. Whoever was behind the takedown 'just decided to knock out a large area of cyber-crime, and this was probably one of the easiest ways to do it,' said Kevin Stevens, a researcher with SecureWorks. As with the McColo takedown of just over a year ago, Troyak's upstream providers seem to have knocked it off the Internet, Cisco said in a statement. 'The ISP was "De-peered,"' Cisco said. 'Troyak's upstream network providers effectively pulled the plug on Troyak's router, refusing to transmit its traffic.'"

1 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good by c++0xFF · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the article:

    Troyak is based in Kostanay, Kazakhstan, according to whois records.

    Taking down the servers is a political matter, not a technical one (in general). But I would imagine that clearly harboring illegal activity would be sufficient motivation for anybody. Imagine if we classified servers like we do countries that support terrorism?

    But even if we got all 249, it's like playing whack-a-mole or cutting off the head of a hydra.