The RBN, a notorious malware and hacker hosting organization, made the news this month when it pulled up stakes and shifted operations from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Shanghai. Literally within days of the move to China, however, RBN abandoned the IP blocks it had been allocated there, spurring speculation by security professionals that the network had gone underground to avoid publicity, which its criminal clients naturally shun.

Other researchers, while not downplaying the scope of the attempted attack, said that it was only its size that set this one apart.

"This is the same stuff we talk about when we talk about innocent searches, mostly anyway, and it must be working because there's a huge push at the moment," said Roger Thompson, chief technology officer at Exploit Prevention Labs, in a post to his company's security blog. "Bear in mind that we see this nearly every day."