Jun 18, 2022
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday disclosed that it took down the infrastructure associated with a Russian botnet known as RSOCKS in collaboration with law enforcement partners in Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K. The botnet, operated by a sophisticated cybercrime organization, is believed to have ensnared millions of internet-connected devices, including Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Android phones, and computers for use as a proxy service. Botnets, a constantly evolving threat, are networks of hijacked computer devices that are under the control of a single attacking party and are used to facilitate a variety of large-scale cyber intrusions such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, email spam, and cryptojacking. "The RSOCKS botnet offered its clients access to IP addresses assigned to devices that had been hacked," the DoJ said in a press release. "The owners of these devices did not give the RSOCKS operator(s) authority to ac