From social media abuse to mobile malware to major busts, 2011 was filled with new twists on old scams.
Public-private partnerships have resulted in the takedown of numerous online criminal networks. For example, on November 8, the FBI, in partnership with various private sector entities, executed one of the largest coordinated cyber-takedown efforts ever with Operation Ghost Click. The target of this takedown, malware dubbed DNSChanger, is estimated to have infected over 4 million machines in 100 countries. And in September, Microsoft took down the Kelihos botnet, a network of private computers infected with malware unknowingly to those computers’ owners. That botnet reportedly consisted of a network of 41,000 infected computers capable of sending billions of spam emails per day.