Botnet of More Than 17 Million Devices Dismantled (arstechnica.com)
(Monday June 01, 2026 @11:00AM (BeauHD)
from the cease-and-desist dept.)
- Reference: 0183512936
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/06/01/0336226/botnet-of-more-than-17-million-devices-dismantled
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/botnet-of-more-than-17-million-devices-dismantled/
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
> Authorities in the Netherlands said they [1]dismantled a botnet that comprised more than 17 million devices and were managed by 200 servers in a joint operation by the police and the National Cyber Security Center. The action, [2]announced Thursday , came about after a security researcher reported the sprawling network to authorities. The host infrastructure was located in the Netherlands. "The police then seized several botnet servers from a hosting provider for investigation," the NCSC said. "The botnet was taken offline by the provider because it was used for criminal purposes."
>
> According to [3]a report Thursday by the NL Times, the botnet was linked to ASOCKS, a Russia-based company that provides residential proxy services. These services cater to people and organizations who want to obscure their locations or identities by proxying their Internet traffic through third-party devices. Proxy services are often used for illicit or unethical purposes such as performing DDoS attacks, running botnet command-and-control servers, operating phishing operations, and scraping website content. [...] It's unclear how the 17 million devices controlled by the botnet taken down by the Dutch police came to be that way.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/botnet-of-more-than-17-million-devices-dismantled/
[2] https://www.ncsc.nl/nieuws/gezamenlijke-actie-politie-en-ncsc-legt-groot-botnetwerk-plat
[3] https://nltimes.nl/2026/05/28/ncsc-dutch-police-disrupt-global-botnet-controlled-via-netherlands-based-servers
> Authorities in the Netherlands said they [1]dismantled a botnet that comprised more than 17 million devices and were managed by 200 servers in a joint operation by the police and the National Cyber Security Center. The action, [2]announced Thursday , came about after a security researcher reported the sprawling network to authorities. The host infrastructure was located in the Netherlands. "The police then seized several botnet servers from a hosting provider for investigation," the NCSC said. "The botnet was taken offline by the provider because it was used for criminal purposes."
>
> According to [3]a report Thursday by the NL Times, the botnet was linked to ASOCKS, a Russia-based company that provides residential proxy services. These services cater to people and organizations who want to obscure their locations or identities by proxying their Internet traffic through third-party devices. Proxy services are often used for illicit or unethical purposes such as performing DDoS attacks, running botnet command-and-control servers, operating phishing operations, and scraping website content. [...] It's unclear how the 17 million devices controlled by the botnet taken down by the Dutch police came to be that way.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/botnet-of-more-than-17-million-devices-dismantled/
[2] https://www.ncsc.nl/nieuws/gezamenlijke-actie-politie-en-ncsc-legt-groot-botnetwerk-plat
[3] https://nltimes.nl/2026/05/28/ncsc-dutch-police-disrupt-global-botnet-controlled-via-netherlands-based-servers
I knew this would happen eventually (Score:2)
by swillden ( 191260 )
Many people incorrectly think of proxies and VPNs (especially VPNs) as a security and privacy enhancement, but unless you're operating the proxy/VPN server yourself they're just as likely to be a massive security and privacy risk. The problem is that they concentrate all of the traffic you'd most like to keep secret in one server, and depending on exactly how the system works, may require installing software on your local machine with ~root permissions. If the operator is malicious, this is a really danger
Thank you (Score:2)
by SoCalChris ( 573049 )
Thanks for explaining to Slashdot what a proxy is. I had no idea.
Dibs ... (Score:2)
... on the memory!