FBI takes control over Russia’s VPNFilter router botnet – CSO | The Resource for Data Security Executives
The Justice Department on Wednesday announced the seizure of a single domain, toknowall[.]com, which served as part of the command and control infrastructure used by VPNFilter, the router malware revealed by Cisco’s Talos Intelligence on Wednesday.
According to the Daily Beast, the FBI on Tuesday convinced a magistrate to issue a seizure warrant ordering domain registrar Verisign to hand control of the web address to the FBI.
By Wednesday, as details of the VPNFilter were made public, the FBI gained control of the address, allowing it to create a sinkhole and redirect traffic from infected devices to a server under the FBI’s control, rendering the connection useless to the attackers.
The domain seizure will help the US government identify infected devices and begin the process of removing infections.