This is Brian Krebs’ fascinating investigative report into the Mirai botnet, the network used to launch some of the largest DDoS attacks on the Internet to date. Krebs’ account include testimony and private conversations with the hackers themselves, who were later charged by the FBI for their activities. It reveals how much the Internet remains a free-for-all, kill-or-be-killed world, where rogue security companies can surreptitiously hijack competitors’ IP addresses1 or take down their services with DDoS hits.
Mirai was the covert arm of a legitimate business, ProTraf Solutions, which offered DDoS protection services in the competitive Minecraft server cottage industry. In early attacks, it sought competitive advantage by DDoSing a competing service, ProxyPipe, which forced many of ProxyPipe’s customers to switch to ProTraf.
Krebs is able to connect ProTraf CEO’s description of his programming language skills to that of his blackhat persona – and professed Mirai author – Anna-Senpai. He also mentions a Github username, shared among a number of online accounts that includes a number of Minecraft forums and a Reddit account. This has several interesting posts, including awfully suspicious speculation about the nature of a DDoS attack on the Rutgers campus.
After the ProxyPipe CEO, remarkably, managed through several layers of ISPs to get the Ukrainian-based control servers for the botnet disconnected, Anna-Senpai taunts him with the knowledge he is responsible. This is just one piece of evidence for his petty-vindictive persona – he is constantly taking down people he gets into disagreements with, like a hapless server operator and, on multiple occasions, Krebs himself.
The ProxyPipe CEO evenutally makes the connection that Krebs describes between Anna-Senpai and his real life persona. In fact, the two had previously been friends and collaborators on Minecraft projects, before, he says, Anna-Senpai fell to the bad influence of places like Hackforums.net.
His sloppiness with his online personas and his hubris eventually does the Mirai creator in, as the FBI track him down after a broad investigation. He is indicted, and now, as of the time of writing, serves the FBI as part of a plea agreement.2