Cybercrime that stole banking info disrupted by 3 tech cos

AMSTERDAM/BOSTON, Feb 25 (Reuters): A cybercrime operation that stole banking information by hacking more than 3.0 million computers in Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and other countries  has been  disrupted by European police with assistance from three technology companies, officials said.

Europol's European Cybercrime Centre coordinated the operation out of its headquarters in The Hague, targeting the so-called Ramnit botnet, a network of computers infected with malware.

Working with investigators from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain, it was assisted by AnubisNetworks, a unit of BitSight Technologies; Microsoft Corp and Symantec Corp in dismantling the server infrastructure used by the criminals, Europol said. "The criminals have lost control of the infrastructure they were using," Paul Gillen, head of operations at Europol's cybercrime centre, told Reuters.

Authorities simultaneously seized servers in four countries  after Microsoft and the Washington-based Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center sought a court order last week in US court through a sealed lawsuit, according to Microsoft.  

Symantec said on its blog that the two countries with the largest number of infected computers were India - where data shows that 27 per cent of infections were uncovered - and Indonesia, with 18 per cent. Vietnam, the United States, Bangladesh and the Philippines followed.

The malware, installed through links on spam email or infected websites, enabled culprits to take control of the PCs  and use them for criminal activities.