Spanish police arrested 3 hackers as suspected masterminds of Mariposa botnet.

Mariposa botnet which has grown much stronger over last six months was posing a big challenge for security software developers. The botnet which was first observed in April-May 2009 has shown significant traffic growth over last six months indicating substantial number of compromised computers.

The botnet was quite actively managed by these hackers who use to update the functionality of the bot more frequently by downloading and executing random files from newly hosted locations. This way it has become quite sophisticated and was believed to have more than 10 millions computers under control.

The real names of these hackers are yet to released. This sounds one more victory against bad guys which arrived just after the news of MS taking down Waldec. Even though the news arrived now the activity of tracking these guys and taking down the botnet has been going on months before this news release.

Kudos to Spanish Police for the successful arrest of these masterminds.

More information on the arrest news can be found at:

https://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/02/tech/main6259510.shtml?tag=stack