Dutch govt disrupts malware botnet with 17 million infected devices
Recorded: May 29, 2026, 3 p.m.
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Dutch authorities initiated a significant action by taking offline a massive malware botnet comprising seventeen million infected devices and seizing over two hundred servers located at a local provider that facilitated the operation. This intervention was the result of a joint investigation conducted by the Police and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The investigation determined that the seized servers were utilized to control computers, tablets, and smartphones for executing various cyberattacks, which are characteristic of botnets, networks of compromised devices leveraged for illegal activities such as distributed denial-of-service attacks, malicious traffic proxying, or cryptocurrency mining. The NCSC reported that the investigation revealed the existence of at least seventeen million infected devices and the use of the twenty servers to host the infrastructure within the Netherlands. Furthermore, the authorities seized several botnet servers from a hosting provider, who subsequently took the botnet offline because the infrastructure was actively engaged in criminal activities. Local media reported a potential link between the botnet and a service named Asocks, which markets itself as a universal proxy service offering seven million IP addresses across one hundred fifty locations and supporting one hundred thousand clients. This platform provides proxies for corporate, residential, and mobile use with monthly subscriptions ranging from five to fifteen dollars, offering discounts for bulk purchases. The NCSC’s action implies that the device owners were not knowingly involved in supporting these cybercrime operations. To safeguard networking devices against future botnet infections, the authorities provided general security recommendations, emphasizing the necessity of changing default credentials to unique and strong passwords, applying the latest firmware updates, and disabling remote administration panels whenever they are not actively needed. This incident underscores the complex nature of botnet infrastructure, involving large-scale compromised endpoints and sophisticated hosting networks essential for executing large-scale cybercrime operations. |