US Disrupts Sality Botnet Linked to Cryptocurrency Theft for Over Eight Years

US authorities have disrupted a long-running botnet linked to cryptocurrency theft. The Sality malware infected computers and monitored their clipboards, replacing legitimate cryptocurrency addresses with those belonging to hackers.

Over eight years, the attackers stole at least $150,000 in Bitcoin and Ether. However, a significant portion of the stolen assets remained untouched, causing its value to rise to over $1.35 million due to increased market prices.

American blockchain analysts discovered that Sality did not have a central server that could be shut down. Infected machines communicated directly with one another, allowing security experts to exploit this weakness and cut off over 15,000 infected computers from the network.