Qakbot Malware Takedown and Defending Forward

**Executive summary:** The report describes the FBI-led international takedown of the Qakbot botnet (Operation “Duck Hunt”), highlights technical analysis of a successful defensive 'vaccine' that leverages the C:\INTERNAL\\__EMPTY sandbox artifact to stop Qakbot execution, and summarizes the botnet's impacts—protecting ~700,000 infected hosts, seizing $8.6M in cryptocurrency, and disrupting infrastructure tied to roughly $60M in ransomware payments—while noting the possibility of the threat actor rebuilding operations.