World’s largest botnet seized in Federal bust, Chinese national arrested

Wang allegedly managed approximately 150 dedicated servers worldwide, 76 of which he had leased from US-based service providers. “Using the dedicated servers, Wang deployed and managed applications, commanded and controlled the infected devices, operated his 911 S5 service, and provided paying customers with access to proxied IP addresses associated with the infected devices,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

Authorities confirmed Wang was financially motivated with no nation-state connections. Charges against him include conspiracy to commit computer fraud, substantive computer fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Botnet used for massive frauds

Several 911 S5 customers allegedly targeted many pandemic relief programs, according to the court documents. They used the IP addresses purchased from 911 S5 to conceal their true originating locations.

One such offense includes filing 560,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims during the pandemic, originating from compromised IP addresses. This resulted in a confirmed fraudulent loss exceeding $5.9 billion, according to the release. Additionally, the assumed IP addresses were used to fabricate more than 47,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) applications, amounting to a fraud loss of millions of dollars.

“Law enforcement initially focused on 911 S5 during an investigation of a money laundering and smuggling scheme, where criminal actors in Ghana and the United States used hijacked IP addresses purchased from 911 S5 to place fraudulent orders using stolen credit cards on the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) online e-commerce platform known as ShopMyExchange,” authorities said in the release. “Although approximately 2,525 fraudulent orders valued at $5.5 million were submitted, credit card fraud detection systems and federal investigators were able to thwart the bulk of the attempted purchases, reducing the actual loss to approximately $254,000.”

If convicted on all counts, Wang faces a maximum penalty of 65 years in prison. An attorney could not be immediately identified for Wang, according to reports. FBI is operating a webpage to help potential victims check if their devices were compromised.