In 2016, three young American hackers, who recently started their career in this field, created a botnet called Mirai, with which they attacked major media, websites and companies for a long time. Their goal was to draw attention to the problem of vulnerabilities in the Internet of Things and the unreliability of many devices connected to the network.
19-year-old Josiah White, 20-year-old Paras Jha and 21-year-old Dalton Norman met on a hacker forum, where they decided to join forces to create a powerful tool for DDoS attacks.
The Mirai botnet used infected IoT devices, such as IP cameras, routers, DVRs and other gadgets, as "zombies", mindlessly executing commands of intruders. Hackers have long scanned the Internet for vulnerable devices and cracked them using default passwords or known vulnerabilities, adding bots to their growing army.
In September 2016, Mirai attacked the website of journalist Brian Krebs, who at that time was investigating the activities of Booter services. The attack reached 620 Gbit / s — it was the most powerful DDoS attack in the entire history of the Internet at that time. The Krebs website was forced to shut down for several days.
Soon after, young cybercriminals published the source code of Mirai on hacker forums to cover up their authorship. This led to the rapid distribution of a variety of copies of Mirai around the world.
On October 21, 2016, one of these copies attacked the DNS service provider Dyn and disrupted Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Github and many other services for several hours across America. This incident was called the largest Internet failure in history.
After the attack on Dyn, the FBI tracked down the creators of Mirai and soon detained them. Hackers had to make a deal with the investigation and for many months helped the FBI catch other cybercriminals using their brainchild for criminal purposes.
As a result, in 2018, the court sentenced White, Ja and Norman to fines ranging from 115 to 127 thousand dollars and community service, but not to prison.
When the term of community service came to an end, the guys continued to work for the FBI as cybersecurity experts. They helped track IoT botnets, catch intruders, and fix vulnerabilities that they themselves once exploited.
The history of Mirai has clearly demonstrated the danger of unreliable IoT devices and the urgent need to improve cybersecurity. After all, the release to the market of each such device is dangerous not for the manufacturer or end user of the device, but first of all for all other Internet users.
The creators of Mirai clearly showed how easy it is to attack the key infrastructure of the Internet, using vulnerable household gadgets, the existence of which many companies in the field of cybersecurity did not even suspect.
After Mirai, there were many similar IoT botnets based on its source code. Although attacks of this devastating scale have not been repeated, the threat remains relevant to this day.
Large companies and providers have become much more serious about protecting their systems from DDoS. In turn, users should also pay much more attention to the security of their devices, setting up non-standard credentials and regularly checking available firmware updates.
The experience of Mirai has forced manufacturers to pay more attention to the security of IoT gadgets even at the design stage. But many devices are still extremely vulnerable to hackers.
Experts do not rule out that in the future, attackers can create IoT botnets on a much larger scale than Mirai, and organize even more destructive cyber attacks.
Therefore, cybersecurity issues should remain a priority for both the state and business. Only through joint efforts can such threats be effectively countered.
19-year-old Josiah White, 20-year-old Paras Jha and 21-year-old Dalton Norman met on a hacker forum, where they decided to join forces to create a powerful tool for DDoS attacks.
The Mirai botnet used infected IoT devices, such as IP cameras, routers, DVRs and other gadgets, as "zombies", mindlessly executing commands of intruders. Hackers have long scanned the Internet for vulnerable devices and cracked them using default passwords or known vulnerabilities, adding bots to their growing army.
In September 2016, Mirai attacked the website of journalist Brian Krebs, who at that time was investigating the activities of Booter services. The attack reached 620 Gbit / s — it was the most powerful DDoS attack in the entire history of the Internet at that time. The Krebs website was forced to shut down for several days.
Soon after, young cybercriminals published the source code of Mirai on hacker forums to cover up their authorship. This led to the rapid distribution of a variety of copies of Mirai around the world.
On October 21, 2016, one of these copies attacked the DNS service provider Dyn and disrupted Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Github and many other services for several hours across America. This incident was called the largest Internet failure in history.
After the attack on Dyn, the FBI tracked down the creators of Mirai and soon detained them. Hackers had to make a deal with the investigation and for many months helped the FBI catch other cybercriminals using their brainchild for criminal purposes.
As a result, in 2018, the court sentenced White, Ja and Norman to fines ranging from 115 to 127 thousand dollars and community service, but not to prison.
When the term of community service came to an end, the guys continued to work for the FBI as cybersecurity experts. They helped track IoT botnets, catch intruders, and fix vulnerabilities that they themselves once exploited.
The history of Mirai has clearly demonstrated the danger of unreliable IoT devices and the urgent need to improve cybersecurity. After all, the release to the market of each such device is dangerous not for the manufacturer or end user of the device, but first of all for all other Internet users.
The creators of Mirai clearly showed how easy it is to attack the key infrastructure of the Internet, using vulnerable household gadgets, the existence of which many companies in the field of cybersecurity did not even suspect.
After Mirai, there were many similar IoT botnets based on its source code. Although attacks of this devastating scale have not been repeated, the threat remains relevant to this day.
Large companies and providers have become much more serious about protecting their systems from DDoS. In turn, users should also pay much more attention to the security of their devices, setting up non-standard credentials and regularly checking available firmware updates.
The experience of Mirai has forced manufacturers to pay more attention to the security of IoT gadgets even at the design stage. But many devices are still extremely vulnerable to hackers.
Experts do not rule out that in the future, attackers can create IoT botnets on a much larger scale than Mirai, and organize even more destructive cyber attacks.
Therefore, cybersecurity issues should remain a priority for both the state and business. Only through joint efforts can such threats be effectively countered.
