Servers in Burnaby, B.C. may have been used as part of a global botnet that stole more than $500 million from bank accounts in several countries, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The Mounties were alerted to the crime ring’s activities by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) in June, according to a report from the CBC.
Back then, the software maker and the FBI announced they had made a major breakthrough in disrupting botnets that have hijacked millions of computers around the world. They said that the more than five million commandeered machines were infected with a malware called Citadel.
The FBI told the RCMP that they had information about two suspicious IP addresses (one in Montreal and another in Burnaby).
A search warrant indicated that the RCMP traced the servers to a Russian business man who was leasing server space in Burnaby. The IP addresses and space was using bandwidth that was six times larger than all the other customers renting server space in the Burnaby facility, according to the warrant. No charges have been laid yet, according to the reports.