Notes

Minecraft Link To Net's Biggest Botnet

Minecraft link to net's biggest botnet



Malware that launched the net's largest cyber-attack ever included links to Minecraft servers according to the people who investigated it.



Brian Krebs, security blogger has spent months researching the attack that took his blog offline.



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



His claims are backed up by an expert in security who has provided security on the net 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" the code.



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



It launched attacks referred to as denial-of service (DDoS) that affected websites with such a large amount of data they collapsed, which were the biggest ever.



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



"Hundreds of hours"



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



Later, a modified 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 2016.



"If you've ever wondered why it appears that so few internet criminals are prosecuted, I can tell you that the amount of determination and investigative resources required to figure out who's responsible for what (and why) in the age of the internet is staggering," he wrote.



His research led him to Minecraft, a computer program that is now owned by Microsoft that allows users to build things using cubic blocks.



It has a massive following particularly among children and it is believed that at any given moment, one million people are playing it.



Mr. Krebs claims that a Minecraft server with over 1,000 users can earn $50,000 per month (PS40,600). This is due to the fact that players renting space to build their Minecraft worlds.



He states that Anna Senpai's identity was not disclosed until he figured out Mirai, the latest member of an IoT botnet family that had been developing for more than three years.



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



ProxyPipe is owned by Mr. Server Stat Coelho was a popular provider of Minecraft servers as clients. The server in mid-2015, the company was attacked by a massive attack which was carried out by a botnet comprised of IoT devices like web cameras.



Mr. Coelho stated to the BBC that he had suspicions regarding the person behind the attack: "Minecraft is a tight knit community. We know who is talking to who."



He claimed that the attack was orchestrated by a security firm that was a competitor that also offered DDoS protection to Minecraft clients.



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



He also claims that the Mirai author - Anna Senpai - contacted him via Skype at the end of September partially to explain that the attack on his business was "not personal" and also to claim that he was compensated by the owners of a huge Minecraft server to launch an attack against another server.



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Here's my website: https://serverstat.net/