Fans of Minecraft has admitted to creating a powerful weapon against the Internet
American hackers-students Norman Dalton (Dalton Norman), paras JHA (Paras Jha) and the Josiah W. (Josiah White) confessed to creating one of the most malicious botnet network is Mirai, which in 2016 brought down many large sites. On Thursday, 14 December, reports Business Insider.
According to agents of the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI), the students created a botnet with the goal to earn extra money on the creation, protection and attack on computer servers of the online game Minecraft. “They developed the Mirai, just to grab a piece of the market Minecraft, but then I realized how powerful a tool they were able to build,” explained they.
The FBI noted that young people are going to have a DDoS-attack to servers of competitors, thereby forcing players to use their friendly venues in which they at the same time planned to protect.
In the end, the trio organized DDoS a company and used Mirai to crush its main rival — the web hosting OVH, which collapsed after a series of attacks of a botnet. “It was a calculated business decision, the purpose of which was to get rid of a competitor,” said one of the investigators.
To get rid of the attention of FBI agent Norman, ja and white have released the source code for Mirai in the network, allowing other hackers to not only take advantage of the power of a botnet, but also to improve it. As a result, under DDoS attacks crashed many major resources, among which were GitHub, Spotify, Twitter and Reddit.
Minecraft — the indie sandbox, which enjoys great popularity among users. Monthly it is played by over 55 million people who regularly pay real money for the service administration for the lease of space for construction or purchase of special tools. According to the FBI, the owners of Minecraft servers earn about 100 thousand dollars per month.