Administrator of RSOCKS Proxy Botnet Pleads Guilty
Summary: Denis Emelyantsev, a 36-year-old Russian man accused of running the RSOCKS botnet, pleaded guilty in a California courtroom this week to two counts of computer crime violations, including damage to protected computers and conspiracy to damage protected computers. RSOCKS, first advertised in the cybercrime underground in 2014, sold access to hacked computers as proxies at prices from $30 per day for 2,000 proxies to $200 daily for up to 90,000, infecting IoT devices including industrial control systems, routers, and smart garage door openers before expanding to Android devices and conventional computers.
What's compelling: The botnet's proxy pool reached 90,000 devices at $200 a day, and many of the infected systems were industrial control systems and routers - the same gear sitting in your OT and branch environments, rented out to whoever paid.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- OT / ICS & Critical Infrastructure
- Related
- Siemens RUGGEDCOM APE1808 Cyber Risks · Nov 12, 2026How to Assess OT Incident Response Preparedness Cyber Risks · Nov 10, 2026Three China-Nexus Espionage Campaigns Linked Through Sparrow Malware Ecosystem Cyber Risks · Nov 10, 2026