Microsoft Foils Russian Ransomware Group Planning Election "Chaos and Mistrust'
St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow. Photo by America_rugbier via Flickr
By Nancy Bilyeau | https://thecrimereport.com
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. presidential election.
“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.
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. Botnets are networks of computers secretly infected by malware that can be controlled remotely.