Dutch police take down Bredolab botnet

Dutch police have uprooted a large information-stealing botnet known as Bredolab, thought to have infected more than 30 million computers.

On Monday night, the Dutch National High Tech Crime Team arrested a 27-year-old Armenian man they believe was the mastermind behind the Bredolab botnet. The arrest took place at Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. The man is being held by airport authorities, a spokesman for the Dutch prosecutor's office said on Tuesday.

Police in the Netherlands have disconnected 143 servers associated with the botnet, a spokesman told ZDNet UK. However, he was unable to say h how many of the seized machines were being used for command-and-control purposes.

,p> The Bredolab botnet was employed to spam users with Bredolab malware, which contained a Trojan downloader and information-stealing components. The command-and-control servers for Bredolab were administered by a reseller for Dutch hosting company Leaseweb, the Dutch National High Tech Crime Team said in a statement.

For more on this story, read Dutch police take down Bredolab botnet on ZDNet UK.