Notes

Minecraft Link To Net's Biggest Botnet

Minecraft link to net's biggest botnet



20 January 2017



According to those who investigated it, the malware that launched the largest cyber-attack on the net in its history had links to Minecraft servers.



Security blogger Brian Krebs has spent months investigating the attack which knocked his blog offline.



He claims that the origins of the Mirai botnet can be traced back to rivalries in the Minecraft community.



He is supported by a security expert who provided net protection for Minecraft servers.



Robert Coelho (Vice President of Security Firm ProxyPipe) told the BBC that his suspicions regarding the Mirai code were passed to the FBI who is "actively investigating" them.



The botnet Mirai was made up of more than 500,000 web-connected devices such as webcams and routers.



The net was the victim of the largest denial-of–service (DDoS), attacks that hit web sites with so much data they fell over,



Victims that were knocked offline included Twitter, Spotify and Reddit.



"Hundreds of hours"



Shortly after the attacks, the person claiming responsibility, using codename Anna Senpai, released the source code online, opening the door for copycat attacks.



A modified form of the malware was later used to attack UK internet service providers TalkTalk and the Post Office.
Gaming


Krebs spent "hundreds upon hours" trying to find out who was behind the Mirai botnet that hit him in September 2016.



He wrote, "If you have ever wondered why so few internet criminals are being brought to justice, then I can tell that the sheer amount and persistence required to piece together who's done which (and why) online is enormous."



His research led to him to Minecraft, a Microsoft-owned computer game in which users create things from cubic blocks.



It has a huge following, especially among children, and it is estimated that at any one time a million people are playing it.



According to Mr Krebs, a large successful Minecraft web server with more than 1,000 players logging on each day can earn up to $50,000 (PS40,600) per month, mainly from players renting space to build their Minecraft worlds.



"The first clues to Anna Senpai's identity didn't become clear until I understood that Mirai was just the latest incarnation of an IoT [internet of things] botnet family that has been in development and relatively broad use for nearly three years," he writes.



The code for these earlier versions was often used to knock over web servers used to host Minecraft, he claims.



ProxyPipe, owned by Mr Coelho, had many Minecraft servers as clients. In mid-2015, ProxyPipe was hit by a massive attack launched from a botnet of IoT devices like web cameras.



BBC spokesmen heard Mr Coelho say that he had suspicions about the attacker. "Minecraft is an intimate community. We know who is talking.



He claimed that the attack was carried out by a rival security firm that also provided DDoS protection for Minecraft clients.



He claimed that the founder of the security firm had previously run a Minecraft web server and was one of his clients.



He also claims that Anna Senpai (the Mirai author) contacted him via Skype in September to explain that the attack was not personal, but also to brag to the owners of a large Minecraft Server that he had been paid to launch an attack against a rival server.



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