A New York judge issues a default ruling against two Russians Google accused of running a botnet infecting 1M+ devices, ordering them to pay Google's legal fees
Judge tells tale of two men, their lawyer, and a ‘willful campaign... to mislead the court’ — A New York judge has issued …
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes the loop on a case Google opened when it sued the two Russians in December 2021 over the Glupteba botnet, which infected over a million devices and hid command-and-control addresses on Bitcoin's blockchain. The default ruling came after what the judge described as a willful campaign by the defendants' lawyer to mislead the court, so there was no contested trial — just an order to pay Google's legal fees.
The win lands on top of Google's own accounting: in 2024 it declared its affirmative litigation policy of pursuing hackers in court had paid off, and this judgment is the kind of enforceable result that policy needed. It also sets the template Google reused when it filed suit against 25 unnamed individuals behind the BadBox 2.0 botnet in July 2025.
First-order effects
- The two named defendants are on the hook for Google's legal fees without having mounted a defense, handing Google a documented court victory in a case where the accused never showed up to fight one.
Second-order effects
- A clean default win makes the litigation playbook cheaper to repeat — Google's subsequent BadBox 2.0 suit against 25 unnamed Chinese individuals follows the same sue-the-operators structure, now backed by proof the strategy produces judgments.
Third-order effects
- Botnet enforcement is shifting from technical takedowns to standing courtroom campaigns, even as the jurisdictional asymmetry persists: Google wins judgments in New York while simultaneously absorbing revenue-based fines in Russia, meaning litigation outcomes depend on where the platform can actually reach the accused.
The trend: Google is institutionalizing offensive litigation as a core security function, converting each botnet case into a reusable legal template for the next one.