Cybersecurity firm Avast and French police have neutralized the Retadup malware on over 850,000 computers after taking control of its command and control (C&C) server.
Retadup is a worm that has been around since at least 2017. It has been used by cybercriminals to deliver information stealers, ransomware and cryptocurrency miners. In recent months, it was mainly used to install Monero cryptocurrency miners on devices located in Latin America.
Avast said it started closely monitoring the activities of the threat actor behind Retadup in March 2019. An analysis revealed that the C&C communication protocol used by the malware had a design flaw that could be exploited by someone with access to the C&C server to remove the malware from compromised machines.
After determining that the Retadup C&C infrastructure was mostly located in France, Avast reached out to the Cybercrime Fighting Center (C3N) of the French National Gendarmerie. The law enforcement agency obtained an image of the C&C server from the company providing hosting services to the cybercriminals, which allowed Avast to collect some data about the victims.
The company was only provided a C&C snapshot that did not contain any private information about victims, but there was enough data to determine that there were over 850,000 infected PCs, that a vast majority were located in Latin America, and that more than 85% of victims did not have any third-party security software installed. Peru accounted for the highest number of infections, followed by Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico and Ecuador.
Avast’s investigation also revealed that the individual who likely developed Retadup created a Twitter account in April 2018 and publicly to ..
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