Arrests made in connection with the Mariposa botnet

More details have emerged about a cybercrime investigation that led to the takedown of a botnet containing 12m zombie PCs and the arrest of three alleged kingpins who built and ran it.

As previously reported, the Mariposa botnet was principally geared towards stealing online login credentials for banks, email services and the like from compromised Windows PCs. The malware infected an estimated 12.7 million computers in more than 190 countries.

At a press conference announcing the operation in Madrid on Wednesday, Spanish police said they recovered the personal details of 800,000 people from systems recovered from three alleged cybercriminals. This cache of stolen information includes bank login credentials from businesses and consumers as well as email passwords.