The U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday introduced the disruption of the web infrastructure related to DanaBot (aka DanaTools) and unsealed prices towards 16 people for his or her alleged involvement within the improvement and deployment of the malware, which it stated was managed by a Russia-based cybercrime group.
The malware, the DoJ stated, contaminated greater than 300,000 sufferer computer systems around the globe, facilitated fraud and ransomware, and triggered not less than $50 million in damages. Two of the defendants, Aleksandr Stepanov (aka JimmBee), 39, and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin (aka Onix), 34, each from Novosibirsk, Russia, are at the moment at massive.
Stepanov has been charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and financial institution fraud, aggravated identification theft, unauthorized entry to a protected pc to acquire data, unauthorized impairment of a protected pc, wiretapping, and use of an intercepted communication. Kalinkin has been charged with conspiracy to achieve unauthorized entry to a pc to acquire data, to achieve unauthorized entry to a pc to defraud, and to commit unauthorized impairment of a protected pc.
The unsealed legal criticism and indictment present that most of the defendants, counting Kalinkin, uncovered their real-life identities after unintentionally infecting their very own programs with the malware.
“In some circumstances, such self-infections gave the impression to be intentionally achieved with a view to check, analyze, or enhance the malware,” the criticism [PDF] learn. “In different circumstances, the infections gave the impression to be inadvertent – one of many hazards of committing cybercrime is that criminals will generally infect themselves with their very own malware by mistake.”
“The inadvertent infections typically resulted in delicate and compromising knowledge being stolen from the actor’s pc by the malware and saved on the DanaBot servers, together with knowledge that helped determine members of the DanaBot group.”
If convicted, Kalinkin is anticipated to face a statutory most sentence of 72 years in federal jail. Stepanov would face a jail time period of 5 years. Concurrent with the motion, the regulation enforcement effort, carried out as a part of Operation Endgame, noticed DanaBot’s command-and-control (C2) servers seized, together with dozens of digital servers hosted in the USA.
“DanaBot malware used a wide range of strategies to contaminate sufferer computer systems, together with spam electronic mail messages containing malicious attachments or hyperlinks,” the DoJ stated. “Sufferer computer systems contaminated with DanaBot malware turned a part of a botnet (a community of compromised computer systems), enabling the operators and customers of the botnet to remotely management the contaminated computer systems in a coordinated method.”
DanaBot, just like the lately dismantled Lumma Stealer malware, operates beneath a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) scheme, with the directors leasing out entry ranging from $500 to “a number of thousand {dollars}” a month. Tracked beneath the monikers Scully Spider and Storm-1044, is a multi-functional device alongside the strains of Emotet, TrickBot, QakBot, and IcedID that is able to performing as a stealer and a supply vector for next-stage payloads, corresponding to ransomware.
The Delphi-based modular malware is provided to siphon knowledge from sufferer computer systems, hijack banking periods, and steal gadget data, consumer looking histories, saved account credentials, and digital forex pockets data. It could possibly additionally present full distant entry, log keystrokes, and seize movies. It has been energetic within the wild since its debut in Might 2018, when it began off as a banking trojan.
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| Instance of typical Danabot infrastructure |
“DanaBot initially focused victims in Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Australia previous to increasing its concentrating on posture to incorporate U.S.- and Canada-based monetary establishments in October 2018,” CrowdStrike stated. “The malware’s reputation grew as a consequence of its early modular improvement supporting Zeus-based internet injects, data stealer capabilities, keystroke logging, display recording, and hidden digital community computing (HVNC) performance.”
In response to Black Lotus Labs and Workforce Cymru, DanaBot employs a layered communications infrastructure between a sufferer and the botnet controllers, whereby the C2 visitors is proxied via two or three server tiers earlier than it reaches the ultimate stage. At the very least 5 to 6 tier-2 servers had been energetic at any given time. A majority of DanaBot victims are concentrated round Brazil, Mexico, and the USA.
“The operators have proven their dedication to their craft, tailored to detection and modifications in enterprise protection, and with later iterations, insulating the C2s in tiers to obfuscate monitoring,” the businesses stated. “All through this time, they’ve made the bot extra user-friendly with structured pricing and buyer help.”
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| Excessive-level diagram of multi-tiered C2 structure |
The DoJ stated DanaBot directors operated a second model of the botnet that was specifically designed to focus on sufferer computer systems in army, diplomatic, authorities, and associated entities in North America and Europe. This variant, rising in January 2021, got here fitted with capabilities to document all interactions taking place on a sufferer gadget and ship the info to a special server.
“Pervasive malware like DanaBot harms tons of of hundreds of victims around the globe, together with delicate army, diplomatic, and authorities entities, and causes many tens of millions of {dollars} in losses,” stated United States Legal professional Invoice Essayli for the Central District of California.
The DoJ additional credited a number of non-public sector companies, Amazon, CrowdStrike, ESET, Flashpoint, Google, Intel 471, Lumen, PayPal, Proofpoint, Spycloud, Workforce Cymru, and Zscaler, for offering “precious help.”
Among the noteworthy features of DanaBot, compiled from varied stories, are under –
- DanaBot’s sub-botnet 5 obtained instructions to obtain a Delphi-based executable leveraged to conduct HTTP-based distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults towards the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence (MOD) webmail server and the Nationwide Safety and Protection Council (NSDC) of Ukraine in March 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion of the nation
- Two DanaBot sub-botnets, 24 and 25, had been particularly used for espionage functions doubtless with an intention to additional intelligence-gathering actions on behalf of Russian authorities pursuits
- DanaBot operators have periodically restructured their providing since 2022 to deal with protection evasion, with not less than 85 distinct construct numbers recognized thus far (The newest model is 4006, which was compiled in March 2025)
- The malware’s infrastructure consists of a number of elements: A “bot” that infects goal programs and performs knowledge assortment, an “OnlineServer” that manages the RAT functionalities, a “consumer” for processing collected logs and bot administration, and a “server” that handles bot era, packing, and C2 communication
- DanaBot has been utilized in focused espionage assaults towards authorities officers within the Center East and Japanese Europe
- The authors of DanaBot function as a single group, providing the malware for lease to potential associates, who subsequently use it for their very own malicious functions by establishing and managing their very own botnets utilizing non-public servers
- DanaBot’s builders have partnered with the authors of a number of malware cryptors and loaders, corresponding to Matanbuchus, and supplied particular pricing for distribution bundles
- DanaBot maintained a mean of 150 energetic tier-1 C2 servers per day, with roughly 1,000 each day victims throughout greater than 40 nations, making it one of many largest MaaS platforms energetic in 2025
Proofpoint, which first recognized and named DanaBot in Might 2018, stated the disruption of the MaaS operation is a win for defenders and that it’s going to have an effect on the cybercriminal risk panorama.
“Cybercriminal disruptions and regulation enforcement actions not solely impair malware performance and use but in addition impose a value to risk actors by forcing them to vary their ways, trigger distrust within the legal ecosystem, and probably make criminals take into consideration discovering a special profession,” Selena Larson, a workers risk researcher at Proofpoint, stated.
“These successes towards cyber criminals solely come about when enterprise IT groups and safety service suppliers share much-needed perception into the most important threats to society, affecting the best variety of folks around the globe, which regulation enforcement can use to trace down the servers, infrastructure, and legal organizations behind the assaults. Non-public and public sector collaboration is essential to understanding how actors function and taking motion towards them.”
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| DanaBot’s options as promoted on its help website |
DoJ Unseals Prices Towards QakBot Chief
The event comes because the DoJ unsealed prices towards a 48-year-old Moscow resident, Rustam Rafailevich Gallyamo, for main efforts to develop and preserve the QakBot malware, which was disrupted in a multinational operation in August 2023. The company additionally filed a civil forfeiture criticism towards over $24 million in cryptocurrency seized from Gallyamov over the course of the investigation.
“Gallyamov developed, deployed, and managed the Qakbot malware starting in 2008,” the DoJ stated. “From 2019 onward, Gallyamov allegedly used the Qakbot malware to contaminate hundreds of sufferer computer systems around the globe with a view to set up a community, or ‘botnet,’ of contaminated computer systems.”
The DoJ revealed that, following the takedown, Gallyamov and his co-conspirators continued their legal actions by switching to different ways like “spam bomb” assaults with a view to achieve unauthorized entry to sufferer networks and deploy ransomware households like Black Basta and CACTUS. Court docket paperwork accuse the e-crime group of participating in these strategies as lately as January 2025.
“Mr. Gallyamov’s bot community was crippled by the proficient women and men of the FBI and our worldwide companions in 2023, however he openly continued to deploy various strategies to make his malware obtainable to legal cyber gangs conducting ransomware assaults towards harmless victims globally,” stated Assistant Director in Cost Akil Davis of the FBI’s Los Angeles Discipline Workplace.
