WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI and Justice Department cyber investigators are moving to disable a ring of international computer thieves who have stolen an undetermined amount of money by infecting over 2.3 million computers with malicious software.
The government says this is the biggest such enforcement action ever taken against cyber criminals by U.S. authorities.
The investigators are targeting a software program called Coreflood that exploits a vulnerability in computers running Windows operating systems and allows infected computers to be controlled remotely.
Some 1.8 million of the infected computers are in the United States, with the remainder in countries around the world.
The U.S. attorney for Connecticut, David Fein, says the government will seize servers and Internet domain names containing the Coreflood malware.
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