On February 25th, 2015, with the help of Symantec and other industry partners, Europol was able to seize servers used by the cybercriminal group behind the Ramnit Botnet. The group has been in operation for over five years, allowing the Ramnit threat to infect 3.2 million computers in total, with up to 350,000 compromised computers at the present time. Symantec’s security research helped Europol seize the infrastructure behind the threat.
This group’s main function had been to steal log-in credentials and cookies to impersonate the victim, enabling them to steal data from the hard drive. They infected computers via removable media, malicious advertisements, social media and public FTP servers.
Is My Information Safe From Ramnit?
Ramnit’s botnets were primarily in India, with only six percent operating out of the United States. The good news is that, if you’re using Norton, you’re safe from Ramnit. Norton Security has protected against Ramnit for quite some time before the takedown.
If you’re not protected by Norton Security or other Symantec products (you can learn more about staying protected from this threat and others with Norton by clicking here), you can use our free tool that can check for the infection and remove it from an infected machine.