The U.S. Justice Department announced that it has disrupted the 5socks and Anyproxy botnet services as part of the law enforcement effort Operation Moonlander, which has been conducted alongside the FBI, the Dutch police, and Lumen's Black Lotus Labs researchers, reports CyberScoop.
Over 7,000 proxies around the world have been peddled by the 5socks service, which also had its overseas operations clamped down by Dutch and Thai police. The crackdown also involved indictments against a trio of Russians and a Kazakhstani, who were able to obtain more than $46 million from the sales of access to routers compromised by the Anyproxy botnet. Such an effort comes as thousands of breached internet of things and end-of-life devices were noted by Black Lotus Labs to have been impacted by the botnets, most of which were in the U.S. "We discovered a weekly average of 1,000 unique bots in contact with the command-and-control infrastructure located in Turkey," said researchers.
Over 7,000 proxies around the world have been peddled by the 5socks service, which also had its overseas operations clamped down by Dutch and Thai police. The crackdown also involved indictments against a trio of Russians and a Kazakhstani, who were able to obtain more than $46 million from the sales of access to routers compromised by the Anyproxy botnet. Such an effort comes as thousands of breached internet of things and end-of-life devices were noted by Black Lotus Labs to have been impacted by the botnets, most of which were in the U.S. "We discovered a weekly average of 1,000 unique bots in contact with the command-and-control infrastructure located in Turkey," said researchers.
