Authorities in the United States, Germany, and Canada have worked together to shut down key infrastructure used by several dangerous botnets, including Aisuru, KimWolf, JackSkid, and Mossad.
These botnets were responsible for infecting millions of Internet of Things devices such as webcams, digital video recorders, and WiFi routers.
The operation targeted the command and control systems that allowed cybercriminals to manage these botnets. Officials also took down virtual servers, internet domains, and other tools used to carry out large-scale cyber attacks. These botnets had recently been used to launch hundreds of thousands of distributed denial of service attacks against targets around the world, including systems linked to the United States Department of Defense network.
One of the most powerful attacks linked to these networks happened in December, when the Aisuru botnet reached a peak of 31.4 terabits per second and generated around 200 million requests per second. This attack mainly targeted companies in the telecommunications sector. The same botnet had previously set another record at 29.7 terabits per second. In another case, an attack believed to be connected to Aisuru reached 15.72 terabits per second and involved around 500,000 IP addresses.
Officials said the main goal of this international effort was to disrupt the communication systems used by these botnets, stop further infections, and reduce their ability to launch future attacks. According to court documents, Aisuru alone issued more than 200,000 attack commands, while KimWolf was responsible for over 25,000. JackSkid launched more than 90,000 attacks, and Mossad was linked to over 1,000.
In total, these botnets infected more than three million devices, many of them located in the United States. The infected devices were then used as part of large networks to carry out attacks without the owners’ knowledge.
Investigators also found that the operators behind these botnets were selling access to other cybercriminals. This allowed anyone willing to pay to launch powerful attacks, often causing serious financial damage to businesses and requiring costly recovery efforts.
Cybersecurity company Akamai, which supported the operation, warned that these kinds of attacks can seriously disrupt internet services. They can slow down or shut off access for users, affect internet service providers, and even put pressure on advanced cloud-based protection systems.
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In some cases, attackers used these botnets to demand money from victims in exchange for stopping the attacks. This made the situation even more damaging for targeted organizations.
