Dutch authorities have successfully taken down a massive botnet that had compromised millions of devices — including computers, tablets, smartphones, and IoT devices — and was being used to carry out malicious cyberattacks. The Dutch Politie and the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) confirmed that the network consisted of at least 17 million infected devices, with more than 200 servers based in the Netherlands serving as its backend infrastructure.
Officials seized a portion of those servers from a hosting provider, which subsequently took the entire botnet offline after its criminal use was exposed. While authorities did not name the botnet directly, local outlet NL Times identified it as Asocks — a residential proxy service previously tied to a 2024 malware campaign called PROXYLIB that secretly enrolled infected Android devices into its proxy network.
Residential proxies exist in a legal grey area: while they have legitimate uses such as bypassing geo-restrictions, the ecosystem is frequently exploited by bad actors who route malicious traffic through compromised devices. To protect against botnet infections, authorities recommend keeping operating systems updated, using strong and unique passwords, enabling two-factor authentication, installing apps only from trusted sources, and securing Wi-Fi networks with WPA2 or WPA3.
https://thehackernews.com/2026/05/dutch-authorities-dismantle-botnet.html
