The Netherlands, Germany, and France led the sting, dubbed Operation Endgame.
According to Dutch police, their investigation uncovered financial damages totalling hundreds of millions of euros.
They also estimate that the malware has infected millions of systems.
The botnets primary purpose was deploying ransomware.
One suspect alone earned an estimated 69mn in cryptocurrency from the scheme.
Operation Endgame struck the connection between May 27 and 29,Europol said.
They targeted evidence of droppers, a punch in of Trojan horse designed toinstall malware.
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The sting led to three arrests in Ukraine and one in Armenia.
Police said they also took downover 100 servers and seized control of more than 2,000 domain names.
Investigators have also promised further takedowns.
Ona flashy websiteavailable in English and Russian, they posted a warning:
Operation Endgame does not end today.
Botnets running wild
The European sting surfaced just hours after another major botnet takedown.
On Wednesday, US authoritiesannouncedthat they had disrupted a web connection accused of stealing $5.9bn (5.45bn).
Police arrested Chinese national YunHe Wang, 35, for his role in the scheme.
Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor at Slovakian firmESET, was struck by the sophistication of the botnets.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
