Google says its new “affirmative litigation” policy of pursuing hackers and scammers in court, like two Russians behind the 2021 Glupteba botnet, has paid off
Paresh Dave / Wired :
Context & Ripple Effects
Google’s claim follows its 2021 suit over the Glupteba botnet, which it said had infected more than one million devices and used Bitcoin’s blockchain for command-and-control addresses. A subsequent default ruling against the accused operators ordered them to pay Google’s legal fees.
The story matters as Google frames civil litigation not just as recovery after abuse, but as an active tool for pursuing the people and infrastructure behind it.
First-order effects
- Google has a public basis to continue its affirmative-litigation approach against alleged hackers and scammers, rather than relying solely on technical disruption.
- The two Russians named in the Glupteba case face the practical consequences of the prior default judgment, including responsibility for Google’s legal fees.
Second-order effects
- Other operators and intermediaries tied to online abuse face a higher risk that major platforms will seek court orders alongside domain, account, or infrastructure takedowns.
- For Google, successful cases can turn evidence gathered in security investigations into legal leverage, reinforcing the link between its abuse-response and legal teams.
Third-order effects
- If large platforms repeatedly pair technical enforcement with civil claims, cybercrime disruption may increasingly depend on private companies using courts to target distributed criminal infrastructure.
- The approach remains constrained by attribution and cross-border enforcement: judgments can establish liability, but may not by themselves reach defendants or infrastructure outside the court’s effective jurisdiction.
The trend: Major internet platforms are treating civil litigation as a recurring component of cybercrime disruption, alongside technical defenses and platform enforcement.