What is Mariposa virus?
Mariposa virus, distributed by a group of worms and attributed to Butterfly Bot Kit or simply botnet, is a sly infection which has infected over 12 million computers around the world. The infection was released in 2009, but soon the FBI, Slovenian and Spanish Police arrested three men who were believed to be responsible for operating on the botnet, which was shut down afterwards. Even thought the server is decontaminated and the attackers cannot give new orders for the virus, it is advisable to keep the most modern antispyware tools updated in case some co-elements of Mariposa virus infect the computer.
The virus is reported to have infected computers including personal, university, government in approximately 200 countries. Mariposa virus steals sensitive information and sends it via email from the victim’s computer to the host machine. The computer user’s banking details such as credit card numbers, bank account login information and online account information for emails or social networks is said to be a target of this threat. Besides stealing sensitive date, Mariposa virus is capable of sending spam emails and hijacking internet browsers. At the time when Mariposa virus was under investigation, about 40 major banks and other large companies were known to have been compromised. On one of the arrested suspects’ computer, 800,000 pieces of personal information was found.
It was investigated that the botnet could be leased to criminals, who could access different “services” of the bot. For example, the price for acquiring access to functions enabling an attacker to steal bank account data was more than $1000. The schemers also employed money mules to make transactions using the stolen infection. Luckily, the botnet’s controllers were detected as one of them brought to light the IP address of his computer.
The infection is known to be able to spread via instant messenger programs, removable disks such as USB devices, or peer-to-peer networks. When the virus gets into the system, it installs new malware for collecting and stealing information and adjusting the victimized computer for other illegal activities. Recently, it has been observed that the public is getting more interested in this Mariposa virus, which, without doubt should be removed from the infected computer. As the infection did so much damage in the past, it is highly advisable to get ready for its attacks and arm the computer with the most modern security tools. If, by chance, the computer is already infected with Mariposa virus, then it should be removed immediately to avoid the highly probable identity theft.
Our advice is to use a reliable spyware removal application, which will scan the computer and ensure that it will be protected against further malware attacks in the future. If the PC is infected with malware, the security application will remove Mariposa and other malware detected in the system. As the infection is very dangerous, it is not advisable to try to delete it manually, because a procedure of the manual removal requires a lot of attention, especially in the serious case of Mariposa virus.
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