Notes

Minecraft Link To Net's Biggest Botnet

Minecraft link to the largest botnet



20 January 2017



Malware that triggered the internet's largest cyber-attack ever had links to Minecraft servers as per the experts who were investigating it.



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



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



He is backed by security experts who provide protection of the net for Minecraft servers.



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



The botnet Mirai consisted of more than 500,000 internet-connected devices like routers and webcams.



It launched attacks referred to as denial-of service (DDoS) that hit web pages with so much data they collapsed, which were the largest ever.



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



"Hundreds of hours"



Shortly after the attacks, the person who claimed the responsibility, utilizing the codename Anna Senpai, posted the source code online, opening the door to copies of the attacks.



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



Since being struck by the Mirai botnet in September 2016, Mr Krebs has put in "hundreds of hours" to identifying the person behind it.



"If you've ever wondered why it appears that so few internet criminals are prosecuted I can tell you that the sheer amount of determination and resources needed to piece together who's done what to whom (and why) in the online era is staggering," he wrote.



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



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



According to Mr Krebs, a large successful Minecraft web server with more than 1,000 players who log on daily could earn up to $50,000 (PS40,600) per month, mainly from gamers renting space to create their own Minecraft worlds.



"The first clues to Anna Senpai's identity weren't evident until I realized that Mirai was simply the most recent incarnation of an IoT [internet of things] botnet family that has been in development and in broad use for nearly three years," he writes.



The code in earlier versions was frequently used to hack into servers hosting Minecraft He claims.



ProxyPipe - owned by Mr Coelho was a popular provider of Minecraft servers as clients. Game Tolia The server in mid-2015 was attacked by a massive attack that was launched by a botnet made up of IoT devices like web cameras.



Mr Coelho stated to the BBC that he was able to confirm his suspicions as to who was responsible for the attack: "Minecraft is a tight knit community. We know who is talking.



He claimed that the attack was perpetrated by a rival security firm, which also provided DDoS protection to Minecraft clients.



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, partially to explain that the attack on his firm was "not personal" but also to brag that he had been compensated by the owners of a large Minecraft server to launch an attack against another server.



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