Dutch police break cyber crime ring

The botnet infected over 30 million computers before it was taken down

The man behind the attack was arrested this morning

The Dutch High Tech Crime Team has taken a dangerous botnet out of circulation, following the arrest of its mastermind this morning.

The botnet had infected at least 30 million computers worldwide, and was part of the Bredolab network, used to distribute malware to unsuspecting users’ computers.

It used servers hired in the Netherlands from LeaseWeb, the country’s largest hosting provider.

Alex de Joode, security officer at LeaseWeb, explained that his company was first informed of the malicious activity through its community outreach programme, which sees it give free bandwidth and capacity to IT security companies.

He added that these security companies tend to set up "honey traps" around the internet to tempt hackers. They saw activity in these traps coming from LeaseWeb’s domain and passed on the IP address to LeaseWeb. The hosting provider was simultaneously notified of activity by the Dutch police.

"They ordered us to keep the server running so they could perform their investigations," said de Joode.

"The criminal responsible for the botnet was identified and arrested this morning in Armenia," said de Joode.

The police first contacted LeaseWeb in mid August, with the period between the initial investigation and the arrest being around two months.