Google has won a lawsuit against two Russians in connection with the operation of a botnet known as Glupteba. A year ago, the tech giant destroyed the malware’s Command-and-Control (C2) server and filed a lawsuit against Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov, who were alleged to have overseen managing the illegal botnet. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York imposed financial sanctions against the defendants and their American-based legal representatives. Additionally, the defendants are required to cover Google’s legal costs. The attempt by the defendants to impose penalties on Google was rejected. The defendants and 15 others are charged with deploying the software to hack a network of devices in order to mine cryptocurrencies, collect victims’ financial and personal information, and display disruptive advertisements. Glupteba set itself apart from its competitors by using cryptocurrency blockchains as a C2 server. According to Google, the botnet infected more than a million Windows systems globally. “The Glupteba malware […] instructs infected computers to look for the addresses of its C2 servers by referencing transactions associated with specific accounts on the Bitcoin blockchain,” stated the court.