Dutch authorities disrupt botnet with 17 million infected devices

Dutch authorities have taken offline a massive botnet consisting of at least 17 million infected devices. The operation involved seizing more than 200 servers at a hosting provider in the Netherlands. The action followed an investigation by police in collaboration with the National Cyber Security Centre. The servers were used to control compromised computers, tablets, and smartphones for cyberattacks including DDoS attacks and malicious traffic proxying. Local media linked the botnet to a service called Asocks that offers proxy services. Authorities did not name the botnet publicly. The hosting provider took the infrastructure offline after it was found to be supporting criminal activity.