Miracle · April 13 2011

The Miracle of the Coreflood Stop

The wonder

On 13 April 2011 the US Department of Justice and the FBI obtained court permission to seize Coreflood's command servers and 29 domains, replacing them with government servers. When infected PCs phoned home, they got a simple order: stop. Coreflood had infected about 2.3 million computers to steal banking credentials, and it was the first time US authorities had remotely disabled malware on victims' machines.

The miracle worker

The FBI and the US Department of Justice, who asked a judge for permission before sending the command and worked with ISPs to notify victims.

Thanksgiving

For a stop order that reached millions of computers that didn't know they were sick, we give thanks. Amen.