Notes

Minecraft Link To Net's Biggest Botnet

Minecraft link to the largest botnet



Malware that triggered the internet's largest ever cyber-attack last year included links to Minecraft servers according to the people who investigated it.



Brian Krebs, security blogger, spent months investigating the attack that knocked his blog offline.



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



His claims are confirmed by a security expert who provided net security for Minecraft servers.



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



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



It was the cause of attacks known as denial-of-service (DDoS) that targeted websites with so many data that they fell apart, and were the biggest ever.



The victims who were shut down included Twitter, Spotify and Reddit.



"Hundreds of hours"



Shortly after the attacks, the individual responsible - using the codename Anna Senpai - published the source code online, which paved the way for copycat attacks.



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



Since being struck by the Mirai botnet in September 2016 The entrepreneur Krebs has devoted "hundreds of hours" to identifying the person behind it.



He wrote "If you have ever wondered why only a handful of internet criminals are being arrested I can tell you that the sheer quantity and determination required to piece together who's doing what (and the reasons) online is staggering."



His research led him to the online community around Minecraft the computer game now owned by Microsoft that lets players create their own things using cubic blocks.



It is enjoyed by many, and especially children, and is played by over one million people at any given time.



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



He writes that Anna Senpai's identity was not revealed until he figured out Mirai the newest member of an IoT botnet family that was in development for nearly three years.



The code in these earlier versions was frequently used to knock over web servers that host Minecraft the game, according to him.



ProxyPipe owned by Mr. Coelho - had plenty of Minecraft servers as clients and in mid-2015 was struck by a massive cyberattack, launched from a botnet made up of IoT devices like web cameras.



BBC interviewer Mr Coelho said he was suspicious about the attacker, and added that "Minecraft is a tight-knit community." We know who's talking.
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He alleged that the attack originated from an alternative security company, which also provided DDoS protection to Minecraft customers.



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



He also 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 brag that he was compensated by the owners of a massive Minecraft server to launch an attack on an opponent server.



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