The FBI Update That Erased Qakbot From 700,000 PCs — $8.6M Seized

One FBI update quietly erased a decade-old malware empire from 700,000 computers overnight. For over a decade, Qakbot was the internet's quiet delivery van for ransomware crews like Conti, REvil, and Black Basta — draining an estimated $58 million from hospitals, cities, and small businesses who never saw it coming. In August 2023, FBI Los Angeles agents did something unprecedented: they seized Qakbot's own tiered command network from the inside, then pushed a custom uninstaller through the botnet's own update channel. Overnight, 700,000 infected machines across 100+ countries went clean — no victim ever clicked a thing. Investigators also traced and seized $8.6 million in cryptocurrency skimmed from ransom payments. This is the inside account of Operation Duck Hunt: the 48-hour window agents had before Qakbot's operators noticed their empire was deleting itself, and why, months later, the people who built it were still nowhere to be found. #FBI #Qakbot #Cybercrime #Ransomware #OperationDuckHunt #bitcoin Subscribe for more federal investigations