International ransomware network that victimized over 200,000 American computers this year taken down, FBI announces

Washington — Federal investigators took down a criminal ransomware network that likely accounted for hundreds of millions of dollars in damage over the course of its existence, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. 

The FBI and international partners disrupted the Qakbot botnet — a grouping of computers infected by a malware program that was used to carry out the cyberattacks — and are now working to disable the program on thousands of victim computers, law enforcement officials said. 

Dubbed "Operation Duck Hunt," the effort to take down the botnet system also seized nearly $9 million in cryptocurrency that was collected in criminal ransomware campaigns.