IT News and Information Blog

12 Million Computers Compromised  17.03.2010

A criminal group, called Mariposa, infected and compromised over 12 million computers and stole confidential data from over 800,000 users. The sole purpose for infecting the computers was to enable the group to make money from their victims.

The group was caught by a joint international organisation, as reported by ZDNet and Pandalabs. Spanish authorites arrested a principle member of the group in February, 2010 then were able to close down the group completely.

The group, using a type of automated network software called a botnet, stole bank account details, credit card numbers, user names, passwords and other personal information from over 800,000 users. Over 12 millions computers located in 190 countries were compromised. Most of the Fortune 1000 companies were compromised along with 40 major banks.

The group were described as "normal people", not sophisticated computer programmers: they simply purchased malware which infected their victims' computers with a virus. The virus would find the data that the Mariposa group wanted, then secretly send it to them. Maleware is software intended to do malicious or illegal things on a computer.