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[wired] How a dorm room minecraft scam brought down the internet

2K views 13 replies 9 participants last post by  Offler 
#1 ·
Quote:
THE MOST DRAMATIC cybersecurity story of 2016 came to a quiet conclusion Friday in an Anchorage courtroom, as three young American computer savants pleaded guilty to masterminding an unprecedented botnet-powered by unsecured internet-of-things devices like security cameras and wireless routers-that unleashed sweeping attacks on key internet services around the globe last fall. What drove them wasn't anarchist politics or shadowy ties to a nation-state. It was Minecraft.
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Did anyone notice internet crawled in Oct2016??
 
#4 ·
Quote:
What drove them wasn't anarchist politics or shadowy ties to a nation-state. It was Minecraft.
Money is what drove them, they wanted to take down competing minecraft servers so they could run their own without competition, then realised they had something powerful, and decided to grow it as large as possible.

Mirai source code is available for review on github, kinda interesting to look at.
 
#5 ·
They're definitely extremely intelligent, they just let greed get the better of them by not limiting the spread of the bot to only what they needed to perform their intended actions. They programmed the bot to run on multiple different instruction sets and chained together multiple exploits in order to achieve their ends. It was so sophisticated that it was initially thought to have been a state-actor.

I'm really happy for these kids. They can throw their conviction on their resume and easily land a high-paying security job or consulting gig.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Owari View Post

I'm really happy for these kids. They can throw their conviction on their resume and easily land a high-paying security job or consulting gig.
I am sure the next while will suck for them but you are probably correct, this is one felony that won't hurt their job prospects too much. Pretty scummy business models though, crashing competitors minecraft servers to steal their customers.
tongue.gif


They also may have put a lot of the money into Bitcoins or similar which could be safe from the FBI.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asmodian View Post

They also may have put a lot of the money into Bitcoins or similar which could be safe from the FBI.
that isn't really safe though, if the storage is online they could pressure the company managing it, if the storage is offline they could confiscate the device never to see the daylight again.

in both case, they lose their bitcoins.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by epic1337 View Post

that isn't really safe though, if the storage is online they could pressure the company managing it, if the storage is offline they could confiscate the device never to see the daylight again.

in both case, they lose their bitcoins.
True, but it is easy to put bitcoins on an external hard drive and hide it somewhere, easier than thousands of hundred dollar bills at least. I wouldn't trust online storage with that kind of money in coins anyway.
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Profiled View Post

or souce code of the hack. we must know HOW its done.
ITs not much a mystery how it was done, creating a code which would act as was described is also not a big feat - not mentioning there are guys stupid enough to get sample, modify them on their own and then "DDoS as a service".

All that can be recommended is to change login/passwords on IoT devices and home routers, also if possible to utilize dynamic IP.

Edit:
Anyway, trying known default login/passwords is not a real hack.
 
#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Offler View Post

ITs not much a mystery how it was done, creating a code which would act as was described is also not a big feat - not mentioning there are guys stupid enough to get sample, modify them on their own and then "DDoS as a service".

All that can be recommended is to change login/passwords on IoT devices and home routers, also if possible to utilize dynamic IP.

Edit:
Anyway, trying known default login/passwords is not a real hack.
Except it is, and can land you very real jail time.

Also, the more interesting part of Mirai is not how it infected these machines, but what it did once it infected them. It would actively search for and kill 'competing' botnets on the local machine and would also close security holes in the device that were being exploited by other botnets.
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Owari View Post

Except it is, and can land you very real jail time.

Also, the more interesting part of Mirai is not how it infected these machines, but what it did once it infected them. It would actively search for and kill 'competing' botnets on the local machine and would also close security holes in the device that were being exploited by other botnets.
Did not said anything that it will or will not get you a jail time. Anyway it depends on a country... Real hacking would get you through system without using login/password. Usually through a hole which allows elevation of privilegies.

And the "more interesting part" is common for every antivirus. Killing processes, clearing ram and deleting certain files is a way how its done.
 
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