Europol announced the liquidation of the FluBot mobile malware infrastructure aimed at Android-based devices, which was distributed via SMS messages.
The liquidation was the result of the work of law enforcement agencies in eleven countries around the world and a large-scale technical investigation aimed at identifying the malware’s critical infrastructure. The participants in the operation were Australia, Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United States.
“Android malware known as FluBot aggressively spreads via SMS, stealing passwords, online banking data, and other sensitive information from infected smartphones around the world. In May, its infrastructure was successfully hacked by the Dutch police, which led to the deactivation of this strain of malware,” writes Europol.
Dutch police announced, that as a result of the operation, about 10,000 victims were disconnected from the FluBot network, which helped prevent more than 6.5 million spam SMS messages from being sent to potential victims.
It is worth recalling that in March 2021, the Spanish police arrested four suspects, who were then considered key FluBot operators, since the malware mainly attacked users in this region. However, in the end, the interruption in the work of the malware turned out to be short-lived, and soon the malware began to spread even faster and wider, including outside of Spain.
This time, Europol emphasizes that the FluBot infrastructure is now under the control of law enforcement agencies, and the resumption of its activity is supposedly out of the question. It is also worth noting that there were no reports of arrests at this time.