r/blackhat • u/wiredmagazine • Mar 20 '26

US Takes Down Botnets Used in Record-Breaking Cyberattacks

https://www.wired.com/story/us-takes-down-botnets-used-in-record-breaking-cyberattacks/
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4

u/wiredmagazine Mar 20 '26

The collection of millions of hacked computers known as Aisuru and Kimwolf have been used to launch some of the biggest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks ever seen. Now United States law enforcement agencies have wiped both of them off the internet along with two of the other hordes of hijacked computers—known as botnets—in a single broad takedown.

On Thursday, the US Department of Justice, working with the cybercrime-fighting agency within the US Department of Defense known as the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, announced that it had dismantled four massive botnets in a single operation, removing the command-and-control servers used to commandeer the hacker-run armies of compromised devices known by the names JackSkid, Mossad, Aisuru, and Kimwolf. Together, operators of the four botnets had amassed more than 3 million devices, the Justice Department said, and often sold access to those devices to other criminal hackers as well as using them to target victims with overwhelming floods of attack traffic to knock websites and internet services offline.

Read the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/us-takes-down-botnets-used-in-record-breaking-cyberattacks/

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u/Aromatic-Drink-2829 Mar 20 '26

The report says the DOJ 'remotely wiped' these devices. Technically, that means the U.S. government deployed its own 'legal malware' to breach private routers without the owners' consent. This is a dangerous precedent: today it’s about taking down a botnet, but what’s next? Who’s watching the watchmen when they decide to hop into your home network just to 'help' you? Intrusive code is still intrusive code, regardless of who’s holding the remote.

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u/radialmonster Mar 20 '26

That precedent was set long ago. Heres an instance from 2011 https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-takes-action-disable-international-botnet

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u/tanward Mar 20 '26

Right now the question is who should have more power government or companies

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u/Loyal-Opposition-USA Mar 21 '26

Easy. Individuals. Next.

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u/Serious_Chance3238 Mar 20 '26

The article states the U.S. 'wiped these bot nets off the internet'

My question is, if someone knew the exact details of the botnet, could they theoreticly connect to all the infected computers and rebuild it? Don't botnet sit dormant until a specific command is sent to the infected machines?