The botnet used by the hacktivist group is being retooled and tweaked

Jul 10, 2013 13:04 GMT  ·  By

On May 6, 2013, just before several hacktivist collectives announced that they would launch a massive operation against the United States, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters published a statement to say that their campaign against US financial institutions would be halted for one week.

However, after the announcement, their attacks appeared to have stopped completely. I’ve tried to reach out to them to find out whether or not they’re planning to resume the attacks, but they haven’t responded to my emails.

In the meantime, experts have told BankInfo Security that the botnet used by the hackers, Brobot, is becoming bigger.

They say that Brobot is being “retooled” and “tweaked.” The changes observed by researchers will likely make the botnet more powerful, making it difficult for the targeted organizations to fend off the attacks.

Some speculated that the attacks would be resumed on July 4 because of the botnet’s active growth over the days before this date. However, the assumption turned out to be incorrect.

On the other hand, no matter when the attacks are resumed, experts say that the fact that Brobot is being improved is concerning.