A court-authorized international law enforcement operation led by the U.S. Justice Department disrupted a botnet used to commit cyber attacks, large-scale fraud, child exploitation, harassment, bomb threats, and export violations.

The Justice Department announced today that, as part of an international law enforcement effort, federal authorities in Boston seized internet domains that were used to sell computer malware used by cybercriminals to secretly access and steal data from victims’ computers. Federal authorities in Atlanta and Boston also unsealed indictments charging individuals in Malta and Nigeria, respectively, for their alleged involvement in selling the malware and supporting cybercriminals seeking to use the malware for malicious purposes.

Qakbot, one of the largest and longest-running botnets to date, was taken down following a multinational law enforcement operation spearheaded by the FBI and known as Operation 'Duck Hunt.'

Authorities in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. last week said they dismantled the "RSOCKS" botnet, a collection of millions of hacked devices that were sold as "proxies" to cybercriminals looking for ways to route their malicious…