DHS has said it is playing a major role in curbing the spread of the Gameover Zeus botnet. A botnet (think “robot” + “Internet”) can be used maliciously to penetrate a computer and then control it remotely, for example to wage a denial of service attack.
The Department of Justice is leading the effort to combat Gameover Zeus, which is designed to infect computers, steal banking credentials and automate wire transfers to overseas accounts. Known losses are approaching $100 million, according to DHS.
DoJ has just issued criminal charges against an alleged administrator of Gameover Zeus, also thought to be the administrator of Cryptolocker, which locks users out of their computers until they pay to unlock them.
Touting the success of interagency collaboration in this case, DHS is also coordinating with the FBI to notify users of affected computers.
