Alphabet's Google, the FBI, and other tech firms disrupted a major cybercrime operation: the NetNut residential proxy network. Also known as the Popa botnet, the network secretly hijacked at least two million consumer devices globally. It routed and concealed malicious internet traffic for hackers and state-sponsored groups.
The FBI seized domains associated with NetNut. Google disabled accounts and services the botnet used for command and control. Google also updated its Play Protect service to automatically warn users and disable compromised applications. The disruption is expected to significantly degrade NetNut's operations. It will also have a ripple effect across the malicious proxy ecosystem, which often relies on reselling access to such botnets.