Krebs Pinpoints the Possible Person behind the Mirai Botnet
The Mirai botnet caused serious troubles in the fall of 2017 in the beginning, hijacking a number of IoT devices to make a historically massive Distributed Denial-Of-Service (DDoS) attack on KrebsOnSecurity's site in September before taking down a big chunk of the internet within a month. But who's responsible for making the malware? When his website was hacked security researcher Brian Krebs went on a quest to determine the source of the malware, and he thinks that he has the answer: Several sources and evidence that support it point to Paras Jha who is an Rutgers University student and owner of DDoS protection provider Protraf Solutions. Minecraft
A week after the attack on the security site the person who started the attack, claiming to be Anna Senpai's username, released the source code for the Mirai botnet, which spurred another attack that was a copycat. It also gave Krebs with the first clue to their long journey to discover Anna Senpai's real identity. Krebs created a glossary of terms and names with cross-references and an incomplete map of relations.
The entire story is admittedly long and clocked at more than 8000 words, but worth the time to understand how botnet wranglers earn money by deploying zombie devices on innocent targets. The sources that pointed Krebs to Anna Senpai's identity were involved in using botnets for the benefit of shadowy clients, unleashing them on security firms that protect lucrative Minecraft servers that host thousands of gamers. Players will leave the server if their online gaming is disrupted, such as by annoying DDoS attacks or repeated DDoS attacks. This gives servers incentive to switch to security providers which can protect them and, in this case the same security providers that orchestrated the botnet attacks.
According to Krebs' source, his security site was entangled in the botnet war when it disclosed information in early September that led to the arrest of two hackers who were behind the Israeli "vDos" attack service. Anna Senpai was allegedly bribed to unleash Mirai on the KrebsOnSecurity website by angry clients who'd used the now-defunct vDos and thereby bolstering the security company's interest.
