The FBI and the Attorney General’s office have both been recognized by the SANS Institute with the 2011 U.S. National Cybersecurity Innovation Award for techniques used in cyber law enforcement and through use of the computer virus’ own command and control system to disable malicious software.
Assistant FBI Director Gordon Snow and White House Cyber Coordinator Howard Schmidt were on hand to receive the award.
The latest botnet, Coreflood, allows compromised computers to be accessed by hackers, putting sensitive data at risk. Once the computer is infected, it can be controlled remotely through a command and control server.
The FBI and partners installed a temporary restraining order with allowed authorities to seize five C&C servers and swap them for C&C servers run by the government to prevent Coreflood from causing further injury to owners and users of infected computers. This action also allowed the government time to respond to requests from infected computers with a command to disable the malware.
Both the FBI and the Attorney General’s office have taken steps that are the first of their kind to mitigate Coreflood botnet threats, which have resulted in large scale risk reductions to make the internet more secure.
