The U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday introduced the disruption of the web infrastructure related to DanaBot (aka DanaTools) and unsealed expenses towards 16 people for his or her alleged involvement within the growth 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 prompted at the least $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 id theft, unauthorized entry to a protected pc to acquire info, 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 info, 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 by chance infecting their very own programs with the malware.
“In some circumstances, such self-infections seemed to be intentionally performed with a view to take a look at, analyze, or enhance the malware,” the criticism [PDF] learn. “In different circumstances, the infections appeared 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 information being stolen from the actor’s pc by the malware and saved on the DanaBot servers, together with information that helped establish members of the DanaBot group.”
If convicted, Kalinkin is predicted 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 america.
“DanaBot malware used a wide range of strategies to contaminate sufferer computer systems, together with spam e mail messages containing malicious attachments or hyperlinks,” the DoJ stated. “Sufferer computer systems contaminated with DanaBot malware grew to become 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.”
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| Instance of typical Danabot infrastructure |
DanaBot, just like the lately dismantled Lumma Stealer malware, operates below 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 below the monikers Scully Spider and Storm-1044, is a multi-functional software alongside the traces of Emotet, TrickBot, QakBot, and IcedID that is able to appearing as a stealer and a supply vector for next-stage payloads, reminiscent of ransomware.
The Delphi-based modular malware is supplied to siphon information from sufferer computer systems, hijack banking periods, and steal machine info, consumer searching histories, saved account credentials, and digital forex pockets info. It will 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.
“DanaBot initially focused victims in Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Australia previous to increasing its focusing on posture to incorporate U.S.- and Canada-based monetary establishments in October 2018,” CrowdStrike stated. “The malware’s reputation grew resulting from its early modular growth supporting Zeus-based net injects, info stealer capabilities, keystroke logging, display screen recording, and hidden digital community computing (HVNC) performance.”
Based on Black Lotus Labs and Crew Cymru, DanaBot employs a layered communications infrastructure between a sufferer and the botnet controllers, whereby the C2 visitors is proxied by way of two or three server tiers earlier than it reaches the ultimate degree. At the very least 5 to 6 tier-2 servers have been energetic at any given time. A majority of DanaBot victims are concentrated round Brazil, Mexico, and america.
“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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| Variety of DanaBot campaigns noticed in Proofpoint e mail risk information from Might 2018 to April 2025 |
Telemetry information gathered by Proofpoint exhibits that DanaBot was “practically totally absent” from the e-mail risk panorama from July 2020 by way of June 2024, indicating that risk actors propagated the malware by way of different strategies like web optimization poisoning and malvertising campaigns.
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 report all interactions taking place on a sufferer machine and ship the info to a special server.
“Pervasive malware like DanaBot harms a whole bunch 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.
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| Excessive-level diagram of multi-tiered C2 structure |
The DoJ additional credited a number of non-public sector companies, Amazon, CrowdStrike, ESET, Flashpoint, Google, Intel 471, Lumen, PayPal, Proofpoint, Spycloud, Crew Cymru, and Zscaler, for offering “useful help.”
Among the noteworthy facets of DanaBot, compiled from numerous stories, are under –
- DanaBot’s sub-botnet 5 acquired 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, have been particularly used for espionage functions possible with an goal to additional intelligence-gathering actions on behalf of Russian authorities pursuits
- DanaBot operators have periodically restructured their providing since 2022 to concentrate on protection evasion, with at the least 85 distinct construct numbers recognized up to now (The latest 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 information assortment, an “OnlineServer” that manages the RAT functionalities, a “consumer” for processing collected logs and bot administration, and a “server” that handles bot technology, packing, and C2 communication
- DanaBot has been utilized in focused espionage assaults towards authorities officers within the Center East and Jap Europe
- The authors of DanaBot function as a single group, providing the malware for hire 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, reminiscent of 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 every day victims throughout greater than 40 international locations, 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 price to risk actors by forcing them to alter their techniques, trigger distrust within the legal ecosystem, and doubtlessly make criminals take into consideration discovering a special profession,” Selena Larson, a employees 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 individuals 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 figuring out how actors function and taking motion towards them.”
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| DanaBot’s options as promoted on its help website |
DoJ Unseals Expenses In opposition to QakBot Chief
The event comes because the DoJ unsealed expenses towards a 48-year-old Moscow resident, Rustam Rafailevich Gallyamo, for main efforts to develop and keep 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 techniques like “spam bomb” assaults with a view to acquire unauthorized entry to sufferer networks and deploy ransomware households like Black Basta and CACTUS. Courtroom paperwork accuse the e-crime group of partaking 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 overtly continued to deploy various strategies to make his malware accessible 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.
