Police arrest Botnet controllers

Three men have been arrested in the Netherlands on suspicion of controlling a vast illegal computer network made up of more than 100,000 "zombie" personal computers. Police also confiscated computers, cash and a sports car.

The Dutch authorities accuse the three men of using a virus released in February, called W32.Toxbot. The virus infected home computers with "bot" software and connected infected machines to an IRC network in order to create a distributed "botnet" of machines. Infected machines have been found across the globe.

"With 100,000 infected computers, the dismantled botnet is one of the largest ever seen," the Dutch Public Prosecution Service said in a statement.

The botnet was deactivated with the help of the Dutch Computer Emergency Response Team and several internet service providers, including XS4ALL.