Comment by delfinom

Were they? I haven't seen that stated anywhere. The news report from NYTimes does say "the cartels were using it too".

>One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said agents also found 80 grams of cocaine, illegal firearms, computers and cellphones when they discovered the network.

Sounds like literally a mobile botnet and it was probably just leased out access to a range of users.

Leasing access to botnets and other resources is 1000% normal in the "crime web" and is a business in of itself rather than being directly part of the crimes.

On top of that, a "nation state" attacker isn't going to be giving their employees cocaine, unless its Hamas lolololol.