JUSTIN KLAWANS
The United States is taking a major victory lap after federal authorities took down what was allegedly the largest zombie "botnet" in the world. A Chinese national, YunHe Wang, was arrested as the mastermind of 911 S5, a proxy bot service that was "used to commit cyber attacks, large-scale fraud, child exploitation, harassment, bomb threats and export violations," the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release.
The DOJ, FBI and other federal agencies, working in tandem with law enforcement from around the globe, were able to disrupt and shut down 911 S5, the press release said. Wang was arrested in Singapore "on charges that he created and operated the botnet and deployed malware." In addition, as part of the shutdown dubbed Operation Tunnel Rat, the feds "seized over $29 million in cryptocurrency, and Wang and associates were sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury," FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Cyber Operations Brett Leatherman said on LinkedIn.
The botnet is hardly the only criminal cyber operation, but was thought to be the most widespread; 911 S5 was believed to have infected more than 19 million IP addresses around the world, the DOJ said, including more than 613,000 in the U.S.
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