Netherlands Dismantles Asocks Botnet

Dutch authorities, including the United Kingdom — National Cyber Security Centre and police, successfully dismantled a massive botnet comprising at least 17 million infected devices. The operation involved seizing over 200 servers located in the Netherlands that supported the botnet's infrastructure. The botnet was linked to Asocks, a Russia-based residential proxy service provider, which allegedly facilitated cybercrime activities such as DDoS attacks, phishing, and web scraping by routing malicious traffic through compromised consumer devices. The investigation was initiated after a security researcher reported the network to the United Kingdom — National Cyber Security Centre. This takedown highlights the growing threat of residential proxy networks and the importance of international cooperation and robust cybersecurity measures to combat them. Previous research by Human security in 2024 had already linked a botnet called Proxylib to Asocks, identifying Android apps on Alphabet Inc. that secretly enrolled devices into the proxy network.