Dutch govt disrupts malware botnet with 17 million infected devices

Dutch authorities disrupted a massive botnet comprising 17 million infected devices including computers, tablets, and smartphones. The operation involved seizing more than 200 servers at a local hosting provider in the Netherlands that controlled the botnet infrastructure. The botnet was linked to Asocks, a proxy service advertising 7 million IP addresses, 150 locations, and 100,000 clients. The service offered corporate, residential, and mobile proxies for monthly subscriptions between $5 and $15. The botnet was used for cyberattacks including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, malicious traffic proxying, and cryptocurrency mining. Device owners did not knowingly participate in the cybercrime operations.