Europol and the U.S. Department of Justice announced a crackdown on the malicious proxy network SocksEscort, freezing approximately 3.5 million dollars in cryptocurrency related to the network. The operation, codenamed Operation Lightning, saw law enforcement agencies seize 34 domains and 23 servers across 7 countries. The investigation revealed that the network infected approximately 369,000 routers and Internet of Things devices, operating over 35,000 proxy nodes across 163 countries, which were used for ransomware attacks, DDoS attacks, and fraud activities including bank and cryptocurrency account takeovers. (Decrypt)