Andromeda Botnet Shut Down
Andromeda has been active at least since 2011, and was notorious for infecting computers around the globe to form a botnet. With the help of partners—including the FBI, Microsoft, and others—Europol intercepted the internet traffic between Andromeda-infected computers and the command servers to which the malware was communicating. All that traffic was then “sinkholed” and redirected to servers under the investigators’ control, giving law enforcement a detailed view of the malware’s activities. “Andromeda was also sometimes used to download up to 80 other malware families onto infected victim computers,” according to The Shadowserver Foundation, a group of security experts that also helped dismantle the Andromeda botnet.