{"id":7829,"date":"2017-12-14T23:45:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-14T23:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/311765"},"modified":"2017-12-14T23:45:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T23:45:00","slug":"minecraft-was-the-reason-the-mirai-botnet-was-created","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/12\/14\/minecraft-was-the-reason-the-mirai-botnet-was-created\/","title":{"rendered":"Minecraft was the reason the Mirai botnet was created"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p><strong><em>\u00a0\u201cThese kids are super smart, but they didn\u2019t do anything high level\u2014they just had a good idea. It\u2019s the most successful IoT botnet we\u2019ve ever seen\u2014and a sign that computer crime isn\u2019t just about desktops anymore.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211; FBI supervisory special agent Bill Walton on the creators of the Mirai\u00a0botnet.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brought-down-the-internet\/\">Wired recently published a piece<\/a>\u00a0interviewing several people who were involved in analyzing and investigating the biggest cyber security breach of 2016, caused by three college-aged individuals who were looking to gain an advantage in <em>Minecraft<\/em> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/289509\/Report_Internetbreaking_DDoS_worm_traced_to_chief_of_Minecraftfocused_DDoS_guard_firm.php\">creating the\u00a0Mirai\u00a0botnet malware<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>FBI supervisory special agent Bill Walton describes\u00a0how the trio didn&#8217;t intend to create this sort of chaos. &#8220;Mirai was originally developed to help them corner the\u00a0<em>Minecraft<\/em>\u00a0market, but then they realized what a powerful tool they built,\u201d he explains.\u00a0\u201cThen it just became a challenge for them to make it as large as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The creators of Mirai targeted\u00a0French Internet provider OVH because it\u00a0offered <em>Minecraft<\/em> DDoS\u00a0mitigation tools and certain servers.\u00a0\u201cWhy are these\u00a0<em>Minecraft<\/em>\u00a0servers getting hit so often?\u201d\u00a0FBI special agent Elliott Peterson remembers asking.\u00a0<\/p>\n<section>\n<p>&#8220;The digital arms race in DDoS is inexorably linked to <em>Minecraft,<\/em>&#8221;\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brought-down-the-internet\/\">says FBI special agent Doug Klein.<\/a>\u00a0&#8220;You look at the servers\u2014those guys are making huge money, so it\u2019s in my benefit to knock your server offline and steal your customers. The vast majority of these\u00a0<em>Minecraft<\/em>\u00a0servers are being run by kids\u2014you don\u2019t necessarily have the astute business judgment in the quote-unquote \u2018executives\u2019 running these servers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The piece also dives into how investigators tracked down the main culprit behind Mirai, as well as highlighting other servers and companies the malware infected during its reign.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Check out the full piece\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brought-down-the-internet\/\">available at Wired.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0\u201cThese kids are super smart, but they didn\u2019t do anything high level\u2014they just had a good idea. It\u2019s the most successful IoT botnet we\u2019ve ever seen\u2014and a sign that computer crime isn\u2019t just about desktops anymore.\u201d &#8211; FBI supervisory special agent Bill Walton on the creators of the Mirai\u00a0botnet. Wired recently published a piece\u00a0interviewing several [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}