Trend Micro has joined global law enforcement agencies and industry partners to take part in a new operation to take down major global botnet SIMDA.
Operation SIMDA was executed last week to disable the 770,000 computer botnet, which is said to have infected machines in 190 countries worldwide.
The worst affected countries were the US, UK, Turkey, Canada and Russia, according to Trend Micro.
The SIMDA backdoor was used by cyber-criminals to redirect users away from legitimate sites like Facebook, Bing, Yahoo and Google Analytics to malicious web properties.
The SIMDA campaign was mainly used to obtain personal information including banking passwords, and spread more malware, according to the security vendor.
The operation was coordinated by Interpol out of its new Singapore office, with Trend Micro, Kaspersky Lab, Microsoft and the Cyber Defense Institute.
In fact, Kaspersky Lab and Trend Micro staff are permanently assigned to help out at the center.
Trend Micro CTO, Raimund Genes, explained to Infosecurity that the takedown “crippled the cyber-criminals” behind the botnet and ensured that attackers can no longer collect information from the infected computers.
“Trend Micro’s vision is to create a world safe for exchanging digital information. So we need not only to protect our customers from malware, but also identify cyber-criminals,” he added.
“We are working with law enforcement all around the globe, helping them to get threat intelligence and evidence, so they can take the necessary steps to shut down systems or to jail the cybercriminals. The recent activity with Interpol on the Simda botnet takedown shows just how effective such a private/public sector partnership can be.”
The news coincides with the first ever Interpol World event in Singapore, held Tuesday to Thursday this week.
The biennial event will apparently showcase security innovation, and promote public/private partnerships as a key priority in tackling security challenges in four areas: cybersecurity, safe cities, border management, and supply chain.