A global coalition of law enforcement agencies shut down a botnet made of tens of thousands of hacked home and small business routers on Wednesday. The operation targeted SocksEscort, which offered paid proxy services and was built on a botnet of hacked routers used to commit various crimes, such as hacking into victims’ bank and cryptocurrency accounts and filing fraudulent unemployment insurance claims, according to an announcement published on Thursday by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ said the crimes facilitated by SocksEscort cost Americans millions of dollars. Europol said in its announcement of the operation that the SocksEscort botnet allegedly compromised more than 369,000 routers and Internet of Things devices in 163 countries and that the infected routers “have been disconnected from the service.” The law enforcement agency said SocksEscort was used to facilitate ransomware, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).…