CrowdStrike and US Officials Disrupt $150,000 Crypto Theft Operation

US law enforcement officials have teamed up with cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to take down a malware operation that enabled the theft of $150,000 in cryptocurrency. The Sality botnet and malware were behind the attacks, which used a technique called EggJagger to steal funds from victims.

CrowdStrike reported that the entities behind Sality used EggJagger to steal at least 12.1 million rubles ($150,000) over the past eight years. The company explained that when a victim copies a Bitcoin or Ethereum address to make a payment, the funds are redirected to an address controlled by the operator.

The authorities' efforts have disrupted the Sality network, and the criminals behind it have lost the ability to communicate with infected machines. Approximately 15,000 computers were part of the peer-to-peer botnet that checked whether its systems were online every 40 minutes.