Botnet
“Rapper Bot” malware seized, alleged developer identified and charged
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced charges against the alleged developer and administrator of the “Rapper Bot” DDoS-for-hire botnet. Ethan Foltz, 22, of Eugene, Oregon, allegedly rented the botnet to cybercriminals eho targeted various organizations. The botnet operation itself was seized as part of ‘Operation PowerOff ‘on August 6, during a raid at Foltz’s residence in Oregon. […]
Google sues to disrupt BadBox 2.0 botnet infecting 10 million devices
Google has filed a lawsuit against the anonymous operators of the Android BadBox 2.0 malware botnet, accusing them of running a global ad fraud scheme against the company’s advertising platforms. The BadBox 2.0 malware botnet is a cybercrime operation that utilizes infected Android Open Source Project (AOSP) devices, including smart TVs, streaming boxes, and other connected devices […]
New Mirai botnet infect TBK DVR devices via command injection flaw
A new variant of the Mirai malware botnet is exploiting a command injection vulnerability in TBK DVR-4104 and DVR-4216 digital video recording devices to hijack them. The flaw, tracked under CVE-2024-3721, is a command injection vulnerability disclosed by security researcher “netsecfish” in April 2024. The proof-of-concept (PoC) the researcher published at the time came in the […]
FBI: BADBOX 2.0 Android malware infects millions of consumer devices
The FBI is warning that the BADBOX 2.0 malware campaign has infected over 1 million home Internet-connected devices, converting consumer electronics into residential proxies that are used for malicious activity. The BADBOX botnet is commonly found on Chinese Android-based smart TVs, streaming boxes, projectors, tablets, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices. “The BADBOX 2.0 botnet consists […]
New PumaBot botnet brute forces SSH credentials to breach devices
A newly discovered Go-based Linux botnet malware named PumaBot is brute-forcing SSH credentials on embedded IoT devices to deploy malicious payloads. The targeted nature of PumaBot is also evident by the fact it targets specific IPs based on lists pulled from a command-and-control (C2) server instead of broader scanning of the internet. Targeting surveillance cams Darktrace […]
Botnet hacks 9,000+ ASUS routers to add persistent SSH backdoor
Over 9,000 ASUS routers are compromised by a novel botnet dubbed “AyySSHush” that was also observed targeting SOHO routers from Cisco, D-Link, and Linksys. The campaign was discovered by GreyNoise security researchers in mid-March 2025, who reports that it carries the hallmarks of a nation-state threat actor, though no concrete attributions were made. The threat monitoring firm […]
US indicts leader of Qakbot botnet linked to ransomware attacks
The U.S. government has indicted Russian national Rustam Rafailevich Gallyamov, the leader of the Qakbot botnet malware operation that compromised over 700,000 computers and enabled ransomware attacks. As per court documents, Gallyamov started to develop Qakbot (also known as Qbot and Pinkslipbot) in 2008 and deployed it to create a network of thousands of infected […]
Police dismantles botnet selling hacked routers as residential proxies
Law enforcement authorities have dismantled a botnet that infected thousands of routers over the last 20 years to build two networks of residential proxies known as Anyproxy and 5socks. The U.S. Justice Department also indicted three Russian nationals (Alexey Viktorovich Chertkov, Kirill Vladimirovich Morozov, and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shishkin) and a Kazakhstani (Dmitriy Rubtsov) for their […]
FBI: End-of-life routers hacked for cybercrime proxy networks
The FBI warns that threat actors are deploying malware on end-of-life (EoL) routers to convert them into proxies sold on the 5Socks and Anyproxy networks. These devices, which were released many years back and no longer receive security updates from their vendors, are vulnerable to external attacks leveraging publicly available exploits to inject persistent malware. Once […]
Samsung MagicINFO 9 Server RCE flaw now exploited in attacks
Hackers are exploiting an unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Samsung MagicINFO 9 Server to hijack devices and deploy malware. Samsung MagicINFO Server is a centralized content management system (CMS) used to remotely manage and control digital signage displays made by Samsung. It is used by retail stores, airports, hospitals, corporate buildings, and […]