A joint law enforcement agency from the United States, the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany beat up a network of IoT devices used by Russian hackers to carry out illegal activities.
The network of abused devices, commonly known as a botnet, is known as the RSOCKS botnet. There are millions of computer devices and various other devices located around the world that are used as botnets, including IoT devices such as routers, automatic door locks, and the like.
RSOCKS users pay a rental fee of between USD 30 to USD 200 per day to divert illicit internet activities through these various devices. The aim is to hide the location of the perpetrators, as quoted by Reuters on Saturday (18/6/2022).
"We believe that users of these proxy services carried out large-scale attacks against authentication services, also known as credential stuffing, and concealed their identities when accessing their hacked social media accounts, or sending malicious emails such as those containing phishing messages," a ministry spokesman said. US law.
A number of large companies, both public and private, have become victims of RSOCKS, including universities, hotels, television stations, companies that manufacture electronic devices, and so on.
Previously, there was also malware created by a Russian hacker called Cyclops Blink that targeted router devices, namely the router product line from Asus.
Cyclops Blink is malware that has been circulating since 2019, and this malware is linked to the elite Sandworm hacker syndicate, which is suspected to have links to the Russian government.
According to the UK's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), the malware initially targeted WatchGuard Firebox devices, and was also linked to the NotPetya ransomware, which has caused billions of dollars in losses since spreading to many countries in June 2017, as well as the BlackEnergy malware behind the attack on power plants. Ukraine in 2015.