Notes

Minecraft Link To Net's Biggest Botnet

Minecraft link to the largest botnet



20 January 2017



According to those who studied it, the malware that launched the biggest cyber-attack on the internet in its history was linked to Minecraft servers.



Security blogger Brian Krebs has spent months studying the attack that knocked his blog down.



He claims that the origins for the Mirai botnet can been traced back to rivalries within the Minecraft community.



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



Robert Coelho, vice president of security firm ProxyPipe, told the BBC that his suspicions about who was behind the Mirai code were passed to the FBI who are "actively investigating" the claims.



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



It was the cause of attacks known as denial-of service (DDoS), which targeted websites with such a large amount of data they collapse, that they were the largest ever.



The victims that were taken offline included Twitter, Spotify and Reddit.



"Hundreds of hours"



Following the attacks, the individual who claimed responsibility - using the codename Anna Senpai - released the source code online, opening the way for copies of the attacks.



Later an altered version of the malware was used to attack UK internet service providers TalkTalk or the Post Office.



Krebs spent "hundreds of hour" investigating the Mirai botnet attack in September of 2016.



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



His research led him to the community around Minecraft, a computer game that is now owned by Microsoft, in which users create their own things using cubic blocks.



It has a massive following, especially among children, and it is believed that at any given time , more than a million people are playing it.



According to Mr. Krebs, a large successful Minecraft web server with more than 1000 players logging on each day could earn up to $50,000 (PS40,600) per month, mostly through gamers renting space to create their Minecraft worlds.



"The first clues to Anna Senpai's identity didn't become apparent until I realized that Mirai was just the latest incarnation of an IoT [internet of thingsbotnet family that's been in development and relatively widely used for three years," he writes.



He says that the code in these older versions was used to take down web servers hosting Minecraft.



ProxyPipe, owned by Mr Coelho had a number of Minecraft servers as clients. In the middle of 2015, ProxyPipe was hit by an attack of massive proportions that came from an unidentified botnet of IoT devices such as web cameras.



Mr Coelho stated to the BBC that he was able to confirm his suspicions regarding the person responsible for the attack: "Minecraft is a tight knit community. We know who is talking to whom."
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He alleged that the attack came from a competing security firm, that also provided DDoS protection to Minecraft users.



He claimed that the client and founder of the security company had previously operated the Minecraft web server.



He claims that the Mirai author - Anna Senpai - contacted him via Skype at the end of September, partly to explain that the attack on his business was "not personal" but also to boast that he was paid by the owners of a large Minecraft server to launch an attack on a rival server.



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