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International Operation Disrupts Sality P2P Botnet
US-led international operation with Europol, CrowdStrike, and Shadowserver sinkholed the 20-year-old Sality P2P botnet, once exceeding one million infected machines.
On August 31, 2026, authorities from the US, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, supported by Europol, CrowdStrike, and the Shadowserver Foundation, disrupted the Sality P2P botnet by sinkholing communications and seizing domains. Sality has operated for over 20 years, at its peak controlling more than one million infected machines used for credential theft, spam, proxy services, crypto-theft, and DDoS attacks, with over 11 million unique IP addresses linked to its infrastructure since 2017. The disruption exploited the botnet's super-peer reputation mechanism by removing legitimate peers via protocol-level manipulation and inserting sinkhole entries into emptied peer lists.
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Authorities Turn Sality's P2P Network Against Itself, Cutting Off New Malware Payloads
US and European authorities with CrowdStrike dismantled the two-decade-old Sality P2P botnet using peer-list manipulation, blocking payload delivery to infected hosts.
The US Department of Justice announced a coordinated takedown of the Sality peer-to-peer botnet, executed August 31, 2026 by authorities from the US, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania with CrowdStrike and the Shadowserver Foundation. Sality, active since 2003, infects Windows executables and delivers payloads including the EggJagger crypto clipper, which stole at least $150,000, and was used for DDoS campaigns. The operation abused the botnet's peer-list maintenance cycle to insert sinkhole nodes and isolate both super peers and NAT-hidden infections, cutting off URL and payload distribution to more than 15,000 infected machines across two P2P networks.
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Global sinkhole operation ends Sality botnet’s 23-year run
Law enforcement, CrowdStrike, and Shadowserver sinkholed the 23-year-old Sality P2P botnet, cutting 15,000+ infected machines from its operator.
Sality, active since 2003 as a file-infecting virus with two P2P networks (versions 3 and 4), distributed credential thieves, spam, proxies, and DDoS payloads, and most recently delivered the EggJagger clipboard hijacker that swapped cryptocurrency wallet addresses for at least $150,000 in operator profit. A coordinated sinkhole operation replaced the botnet's super-peer list with defender-controlled sinkholes, and investigators in the US, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania seized payload domains. The Shadowserver Foundation is coordinating ISP and CERT notifications to infected device owners.
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