Police team up with Avast to make an 850,000 device botnet self-destruct

The French National Gendarmerie teamed up with security researchers Avast to make a botnet with close to one million devices self-destruct. Avast has been tracking the malware called Retadup for some time. The malware affects Windows machines and has spread at a rapid pace across the world, including the US, Russia, and Central and South America. Retadup was designed to make money through mining cryptocurrency, an increasingly popular type of attack. However, it’s noted the malware could have been used for more traditional attacks like spying on devices or holding them ransom. Avast discovered a design flaw in the command-and-control (C&C) server of the botnet. The flaw would have enabled Avast to remove the infection from victims’ devices without the need to push any code.