Russian RSocks botnet disrupted after hacking millions of devices

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Content source

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/russian-rsocks-botnet-disrupted-after-hacking-millions-of-devices/

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the disruption of the Russian RSocks malware botnet used to hijack millions of computers, Android smartphones, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices worldwide for use as proxy servers.

The law enforcement operation involved the FBI and police forces in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, where the botnet maintained parts of its infrastructure.

A botnet is a swarm of devices that threat actors can remotely control to perform various behavior, including DDoS attacks, crypto mining, and deploying additional malware.

In the case of RSocks, the botnet was used to convert residential computers into proxy servers, allowing the botnet's customers to use them for malicious activity or to appear as coming from a residential IP address.

Typical use-case scenarios for these services include phishing operations, credential stuffing, account takeover attempts, etc. In addition, using a proxy service makes it harder for threat actors to be tracked by law enforcement, especially when those IP addresses belong to people unaware their devices were hijacked.

RSocks was also promoted for use by shopping bots, such as sneaker bots, that benefit from using residential IP addresses, which are usually not banned from online retailers.

 

[plat]

Some more info on the administrators behind RSOCKS. Awesome work, FBI & Interpol!

Krebs on Security – In-depth security news and investigation

The user “RSOCKS” on the Russian crime forum Verified changed his name to RSOCKS from a previous handle: “Stanx,” whose very first sales thread on Verified in 2016 quickly ran afoul of the forum’s rules and prompted a public chastisement by the forum’s administrator.

Verified was hacked twice in the past few years, and each time the private messages of all users on the forum were leaked. Those messages show that after being warned of his forum infraction, Stanx sent a private message to the Verified administrator detailing his cybercriminal bona fides.

“I am the owner of the RUSdot forum (former Spamdot),” Stanx wrote in Sept. 2016. “In spam topics, people know me as a reliable person.”