Phorpiex botnet shuts down and authors put source code for sale

Crooks behind the Phorpiex botnet have shut down their operations and put the source code for sale on the dark web.

The criminal organization behind the Phorpiex botnet have shut down their operations and put the source code of the bot for sale on a cybercrime forum in on a dark web.

The news was reported by The Record after that experts from security firm Cyjax noticed an ad posted by a crook that was involved in the botnet’s operation in the past.

The decision to sell the source code comes from the consideration that the two original authors of the malware have left the operations.

“As I no longer work and my friend has left the biz, I’m here to offer Trik (name from coder) / Phorpiex (name for AV firms) source for sell [sic],” the individual said today in a forum post spotted by British security firm Cyjax.” reads the ad published The Record.

The main bot and all modules are written in C++, authors claim that the bot nor modules trigger any firewall / UAC prompts.

The Record, with the help of CheckPoint malware researcher Alexey Bukhteyev, confirmed that the ad is valid.

The researchers confirmed that the source code of the bot hasn’t been sold before

Bukhteyev pointed out that even if the C&C servers for the botnet are down, who will buy the code we will be able to set up new ones and take control over the previously infected systems.

At the time of this writing, it is not clear how many infected machines are still active.Bot works fine on 32 and 64 bit

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Phorpiex botnet)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.