The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated three individuals – Yunhe Wang, Jingping Liu, and Yanni Zheng – as the ringleaders of the 911 S5 botnet scheme. They also blacklisted three Thailand-based companies owned by Wang that were involved in laundering the proceeds of the criminal activities.
The 911 S5 was essentially a massive network of hacked computers that cybercriminals could rent out to mask their true location and identity online. By piggybacking on these compromised residential IP addresses, the crooks could make it appear their nefarious activities were originating from an innocent victim’s device rather than their own systems.
