Chinese national Yunhe Wang has been accused of hijacking over 19 million private IP addresses and reselling them to criminals for nefarious use.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has arrested Yune Wang, 35, a People’s Republic of China national and St. Kitts and Nevis citizen-by-investment, for his alleged role in a botnet scam "used to commit cyber attacks, large-scale fraud, child exploitation, harassment, bomb threats, and export violations."
According to the May 29 indictment, Wang allegedly "created and disseminated malware to compromise and amass a network of millions of residential Windows computers worldwide" that affected over 19 million IP addresses through the 911 S5 botnet between 2014 and 202. The defendant then proceeded to sell hijacked IP addresses to cybercriminals for cryptocurrencies with victims in more than "200 countries and facilitated a whole host of computer-enabled crimes, including financial frauds, identity theft, and child exploitation."
A separate analysis by blockchain analytics firm Chainlysis demonstrates that wallet addresses associated with Wang together held more than $130 million in digital assets earned through illicit commissions. Researchers at Chainalysis wrote:
