ccn.com
The Retadup malware which had been deployed on hundreds of thousands of computers around the world to secretly mine the Monero cryptocurrency and commit other illegal acts may finally be over.
According to the BBC, the backend infrastructure of the Retadup Monero cryptojacker which is estimated to have infected over 850,000 computers across the globe has been destroyed by the Cybercrime Fighting Center (C3N) of the French police service.
Retadup Monero cryptojacker tricked into self-deleting
The ‘cybergendarmes’ annihilated the network of computers that were infected with the Monero cryptojacker after being tipped off about the botnet’s location by Avast cybersecurity software firm. Retadup’s backend infrastructure was located in the Paris region.
After accessing Retadup’s backend infrastructure, Avast and C3N instructed the worm to self-delete on all the infected computers that were online.
According to Avast, the Monero cryptojacker had a preference for computers with multiple cores due to the higher computing power. Virtually all the infected computers were running Windows operating system. Over 50 percent of the computers infected with the Monero cryptojacker were running Windows 7 OS.