Europol and the U.S. Department of Justice have dismantled the malicious proxy network SocksEscort, seizing approximately $3.5 million in cryptocurrency linked to the network. The operation, codenamed Operation Lightning, involved law enforcement agencies from seven countries, resulting in the seizure of 34 domains and 23 servers. The investigation revealed that the network infected around 369,000 routers and IoT devices across 163 countries, providing over 35,000 proxy nodes used for ransomware attacks, DDoS attacks, and fraudulent activities involving bank and crypto account takeovers.