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It’s botnet takedown season again and this time around, CoreFlood bit the dust. As is most often the case nowadays, this botnet was exclusively built to steal its victims’ personal and financial information. The takedown was facilitated by the U.S. Department of Justice and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This is a great victory for law enforcement and for all the good guys fighting against cybercrime.

One big botnet less means that at the very least cybercriminals will think twice about setting up a server in the United States from now on. That, of course, is not enough. On the bright side, if law enforcement collaboration keeps at this level, we can expect this kind of action to happen again in other places and that would be the greatest victory of all.

The biggest challenge law enforcement today has to do with the different legal systems that deal with crimes that cross borders. If the servers are physically located in a few countries with registrars located in other countries, law enforcement authorities have to jump through many hoops in order to seize domains and servers. I believe we will get there but there’s a lot of work to do. The collaboration between different law enforcement units from all of the countries involved is key and we’re headed the right way. In the meantime, it’s time to celebrate.