The U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday introduced the disruption of the web infrastructure related to DanaBot (aka DanaTools) and unsealed fees towards 16 people for his or her alleged involvement within the improvement and deployment of the malware, which it mentioned was managed by a Russia-based cybercrime group.
The malware, the DoJ mentioned, contaminated greater than 300,000 sufferer computer systems around the globe, facilitated fraud and ransomware, and induced no 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 presently at giant.
Stepanov has been charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and financial institution fraud, aggravated id theft, unauthorized entry to a protected laptop to acquire info, unauthorized impairment of a protected laptop, 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 laptop.
The unsealed felony criticism and indictment present that lots 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 gave the impression to be intentionally executed as a way to take a look at, 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 laptop by the malware and saved on the DanaBot servers, together with knowledge that helped determine 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 quite a lot of strategies to contaminate sufferer computer systems, together with spam electronic mail messages containing malicious attachments or hyperlinks,” the DoJ mentioned. “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.”
DanaBot, just like the not too long ago 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 instrument alongside the traces of Emotet, TrickBot, QakBot, and IcedID that is able to performing as a stealer and a supply vector for next-stage payloads, resembling ransomware.
The Delphi-based modular malware is provided to siphon knowledge from sufferer computer systems, hijack banking classes, and steal gadget info, consumer shopping histories, saved account credentials, and digital foreign money pockets info. It could possibly additionally present full distant entry, log keystrokes, and seize movies. It has been energetic within the wild since its debut in Could 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 mentioned. “The malware’s reputation grew as a consequence of its early modular improvement supporting Zeus-based net injects, info stealer capabilities, keystroke logging, display screen recording, and hidden digital community computing (HVNC) performance.”
In accordance with Black Lotus Labs and Group Cymru, DanaBot employs a layered communications infrastructure between a sufferer and the botnet controllers, whereby the C2 site visitors is proxied by two or three server tiers earlier than it reaches the ultimate degree. At the 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 mentioned. “All through this time, they’ve made the bot extra user-friendly with structured pricing and buyer assist.”
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| Excessive-level diagram of multi-tiered C2 structure |
The DoJ mentioned 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 file all interactions occurring on a sufferer gadget and ship the information to a special server.
“Pervasive malware like DanaBot harms a whole bunch of 1000’s of victims around the globe, together with delicate army, diplomatic, and authorities entities, and causes many thousands and thousands of {dollars} in losses,” mentioned United States Lawyer Invoice Essayli for the Central District of California.
The DoJ additional credited a number of personal sector corporations, Amazon, CrowdStrike, ESET, Flashpoint, Google, Intel 471, Lumen, PayPal, Proofpoint, Spycloud, Group Cymru, and Zscaler, for offering “useful help.”
Among the noteworthy features of DanaBot, compiled from numerous experiences, 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, have 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 concentrate on protection evasion, with no less than 85 distinct construct numbers recognized to this point (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 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 personal servers
- DanaBot’s builders have partnered with the authors of a number of malware cryptors and loaders, resembling Matanbuchus, and provided 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 Could 2018, mentioned the disruption of the MaaS operation is a win for defenders and that it’ll have an effect on the cybercriminal risk panorama.
“Cybercriminal disruptions and regulation enforcement actions not solely impair malware performance and use but additionally impose a value to risk actors by forcing them to vary their techniques, trigger distrust within the felony ecosystem, and doubtlessly make criminals take into consideration discovering a special profession,” Selena Larson, a employees risk researcher at Proofpoint, mentioned.
“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 felony organizations behind the assaults. Personal and public sector collaboration is essential to realizing how actors function and taking motion towards them.”
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| DanaBot’s options as promoted on its assist web site |
DoJ Unseals Fees Towards QakBot Chief
The event comes because the DoJ unsealed fees 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 mentioned. “From 2019 onward, Gallyamov allegedly used the Qakbot malware to contaminate 1000’s of sufferer computer systems around the globe as a way 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 felony actions by switching to different techniques like “spam bomb” assaults as a way to acquire unauthorized entry to sufferer networks and deploy ransomware households like Black Basta and CACTUS. Courtroom paperwork accuse the e-crime group of participating in these strategies as not too long ago as January 2025.
“Mr. Gallyamov’s bot community was crippled by the gifted women and men of the FBI and our worldwide companions in 2023, however he overtly continued to deploy different strategies to make his malware accessible to felony cyber gangs conducting ransomware assaults towards harmless victims globally,” mentioned Assistant Director in Cost Akil Davis of the FBI’s Los Angeles Area Workplace.