On August 31, 2026, U.S., Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian authorities, collaborating with CrowdStrike and Shadowserver Foundation, successfully disrupted the Sality botnet through a peer-to-peer sinkhole operation. Active since 2003, Sality infects Windows executables and spreads malware for credential theft, spam distribution, and DDoS attacks. The botnet delivered EggJagger clipper malware, stealing at least $150,000 through cryptocurrency wallet substitution. The takedown exploited Sality's P2P architecture weakness by manipulating peer lists, isolating over 15,000 infected machines from threat actor control. This peer list manipulation technique prevented payload distribution by inserting sinkhole entries and removing legitimate peers. Associated domains were seized across U.S. and Europe. While the disruption stops new payloads, existing infections remain active requiring remediation. The operation demonstrates that resilient P2P criminal infrastructure can be dismantled through coordinated law enf...
A coordinated law enforcement operation led by France and the Netherlands has successfully taken down First VPN, a service extensively used by ransomware operators, fraudsters, and data thieves to conceal their criminal activities. The operation, which took place from May 19-20, resulted in the dismantling of 33 servers, seizure of three domains, and a house search of the administrator in Ukraine. The VPN service had been advertised on Russian-language cybercrime forums for years, accepting anonymous payments and providing infrastructure specifically designed for illicit use. Investigators gained access to the user database, generating 83 intelligence packages shared internationally, information on 506 users distributed globally, and advancing 21 investigations. The service had appeared in almost every major cybercrime investigation supported by Europol in recent years.