TL;DR: apparently altruistic hackers made a botnet that removes other malware from easily-compromised routers.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time a computer virus has removed others from the system!
They also placed their malware (or goodware depending on which way you look at it) under the General Public License, the widely-used free software license written by Stallman.There’s still a concern that despite the hackers’ promises, they could still use Wifatch for evil – something The White Team even warned about. When asked if they could be trusted, the hackers wrote: “Of course not, you should secure your device.”
Source: Meet The Mystery Vigilantes Who Created ‘Malware’ To Secure 10,000 Routers – Forbes