US, Germany, Canada Disrupt Four Botnets Infecting 3 Million IoT Devices

Authorities from the United States, Germany, and Canada announced on Thursday the successful disruption of command-and-control infrastructure for four major botnets that had infected more than three million Internet of Things devices worldwide. The operation targeted the Aisuru, KimWolf, JackSkid, and Mossad botnets, which cybercriminals used to launch hundreds of thousands of distributed denial-of-service attacks, including several record-breaking assaults that overwhelmed targets such as Department of Defense networks.

The joint effort, authorized by U.S. courts, involved seizing internet domains, virtual servers, and other supporting infrastructure. Law enforcement agencies collaborated with nearly two dozen technology companies, including Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Google, and Nokia, to identify and dismantle the networks. The U.S. Justice Department stated that the action aimed to prevent further infections of vulnerable devices and curb the botnets' ability to coordinate future attacks. Canadian and German authorities conducted parallel operations against suspected operators, though no arrests were immediately disclosed.

These botnets primarily compromised...