DoJ dismantles botnet made of 360,000 infected routers and IOT devices spread across 163 countries that ran for 16 years — SocksEscort proxy network eliminated

DoJ dismantles botnet made of 360,000 infected routers and IOT devices spread across 163 countries that ran for 16 years — SocksEscort proxy network eliminated

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Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-18/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Bruno Ferreira Contributor Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.

Zaranthos After nearly 16 years of inaction US government finally protects Americans and the world after ignoring known threats. Who knows maybe the government was also using the exploits for their own ends. To be somewhat fair it probably often takes many years to work with other countries to shut down global threats, but 16 years seems pretty absurd. It shouldn't be that hard to follow an IP address to an infected router and inform the likely unsuspecting grandma that her router is infected… Then again, how many ISP's have to know they have obvious malware traffic and ignore it, or have no security trained employees at all? Reply

nrdwka It is not clear from article, how it was dismantle: just operator and all unpatched devices still connected to internet? In that case it's just matter of time form them be absorbed into new botnet Reply

ejolson Presumably the SocksEscort botnet secured the vulnerable routers against rival botnets, so the infected ones are no longer vulnerable. Given the tendency for firmware updates to degrade hardware performance and remove features https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/norwegian-consumer-watchdog-calls-out-enshittification there are also people who don't perform firmware updates, not because they don't know what a firmware update is, but because they do. Anyway, security is important. Reply

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