Dutch police take proxy service servers offline

Dutch police took servers offline this week as part of an operation against a proxy service that could enable misuse of citizens’ and businesses’ IP addresses, the news agency ANP reported on 8 October. [1]

A specialist team in the North Holland police unit investigated a worldwide network of nearly 178,000 devices that may have been used for the service, according to ANP. Hundreds of the devices were in the Netherlands. That figure describes the network under investigation, not the number of devices confirmed to have been compromised or used.

A proxy service can route internet traffic through another person’s device, making it appear to come from that device’s connection, such as a household router. ANP said the disabled servers ran websites and programs it associated with criminals. It did not specify how many servers were taken offline or the exact date of the action. Police may disable more servers, ANP reported, citing police. [1]