Bamital

Bamital is a Windows botnet malware family associated with large-scale search hijacking and click-fraud activity. Infected systems were enrolled into a botnet used to manipulate web traffic and monetize fraudulent advertising interactions. The malware operated through command-and-control infrastructure that included multiple domains and supported centralized control of compromised hosts worldwide. Bamital became notable for the scale of its botnet operations and for a coordinated disruption effort led by Microsoft and Symantec, with support from CERT-In and other partners, which sinkholed malicious traffic, kept botnet domains offline, and enabled victim notification and remediation. Bamital is best characterized as botnet malware used for post-compromise monetization through traffic manipulation rather than destructive activity. It targeted Windows systems and relied on persistent infection of endpoints to maintain botnet membership until cleanup or takedown actions removed infected hosts from the network.