Chinese national cuffed on charges of running 'likely the world's largest botnet ever'

US authorities have arrested the alleged administrator of what FBI director Christopher Wray has described as "likely the world's largest botnet ever," comprising 19 million compromised Windows machines used by its operators to reap millions of dollars over the last decade. "Working with our international partners, the FBI …

[pavlecom]

.. largest!?

Do not insult the NSA.

[Jan 0]

C'mon ElReg

Doesn't this deserve a title like:

FBI pulls Wang?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: C'mon ElReg

FBI determined Wang stays in the hole for decades

[The Bobster]

Re: C'mon ElReg

Everyobody in 911 S5 is going to shun Wang, tonite!

[BBRush]

Wang cuffed, shirley?

[lukewarmdog]

Surely a new ElReg unit of measurement...

1 WangBot = 20 million hosts (I'm rounding up to make it easier to manage)

[Snake]

No information on *how*

Both this story and the Treasury link fail to state how, and where, a Chinese national was cuffed and taken into custody. I'd really love to know.

[IGotOut]

Re: No information on *how*

I'm guessing this is the clue... perhaps...

"...St. Kitts and Nevis citizen-by-investment, was arrested ....."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No information on *how*

The press release says that "This operation was a coordinated multiagency effort led by law enforcement in the United States, Singapore, Thailand, and Germany." - I'd put my money on the arrest taking place in one of those countries.

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's a falsely-advertised paid version of Tor?

Run a Tor exit node = others can use your IP. Those VPN services basically did that but charged you for it. I wouldn't call this a botnet, I'd call it a falsely-advertised paid Tor clone....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So it's a falsely-advertised paid version of Tor?

Wray alleged the 911 S5 Botnet infected computers in nearly 200 countries ... Tor node operators volunteer (my guess is that a significant number are voluntarily operated by civic minded law enforcement helping to keep the ball rolling, and that's probably why 911 S5's customers weren't using free Tor), but 911 S5's node operators were hijacked. So that's a difference.

[doublelayer]

Re: So it's a falsely-advertised paid version of Tor?

No, it's nothing like that. It's a paid VPN, which presumably actually functioned like a VPN, not Tor, because all the VPN endpoints were controlled by the same organization. The malware giving them access to the victim's computers has no parallel in Tor. It was what the article described it as: a botnet attached to a VPN program.