FBI seized Citadel banking Trojan servers
Jun 06, 2013
Microsoft and the FBI have taken down a botnet that controlled millions of infected PCs, which was responsible for massive bank fraud. Botnets are networks of computers infected with viruses that let them be controlled by hackers. The outfit runs the Citadel Botnets and is believed to have stolen more than $500 million from bank accounts over the past 18 months. Citadel is one of the biggest botnets in operation today. Citadel is a banking Trojan that has been in existence since 2011. As with most banking Trojans, Citadel is a full crimeware kit, providing the attackers with payload builders, a command and control (C&C) server infrastructure, and configuration scripts to target various banks. Citadel infected as many as 5 million PCs around the world including here in Australia and according to Microsoft, was used to steal from dozens of financial institutions, including American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, eBay's PayPal, HSBC, JPM