Authorities in the Netherlands have dismantled one of the largest botnets on record. The network spanned more than 17 million infected devices worldwide. It relied on 200 servers hosted inside the country to direct traffic and commands. The joint effort by Dutch police and the National Cyber Security Center ended abruptly after a security researcher flagged the operation. The provider pulled the plug once investigators showed the infrastructure served criminal ends. Details emerged last week in an official announcement from the NCSC . The investigation traced the botnet to a Russia-based residential proxy service called Asocks. These proxies route internet traffic through ordinary consumer devices. They promise anonymity. Yet they often mask attacks that appear to originate from legitimate users. The NCSC had warned about this exact threat only a day earlier in a separate post on residential proxies and their impact on Dutch digital security.…