Ten years ago, the tech world was abuzz with possibilities for the “Internet of Things” (IoT) — including bad actors.
A hacker’s frustration sparks a bigger scheme
In this case, the bad actors were a trio of college-age hackers whose ringleader first started launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks when he was frustrated by his inability to register for an upper-level computer science elective class. Paras Jha crashed the Rutgers University registration system on Nov. 14, 2014, and then again the following semester on March 4, 2015. He kept crashing Rutgers systems, attempting to prove the inadequacy of the university’s cybersecurity vendor and hoping to persuade officials to hire ProTraf Solutions, his own DDoS-mitigation company.
Mirai turns vulnerable IoT devices into a cyber weapon
Eventually, though, Jha thought bigger. In collaboration with fellow hackers Josiah White and Dalton Norman, he hatched a plan to rival the biggest ring of DDoS attackers in the world of cybercrime: VDoS. The trio built Mirai, a botnet named for an anime series, and used the malware during fall 2016 to target IoT devices. Within 20 hours, Mirai had infected approximately 65,000 devices and had the ability to double in size every 76 minutes. IoT devices were an easy target; users often did not change their login credentials from the factory defaults, which meant the Mirai creators’ list of 64 common username/password combinations was highly effective. (This is an excellent reminder for Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Change your passwords!)
What led to the FBI’s apprehension of the Mirai hackers was their decision to share their source code with the world. They had moved on to other projects, including a clickfraud scheme, but other hackers picked up Mirai and left clues leading to its original creators’ apprehension. Jha, White, and Norman each ended up serving five years of probation, paying fines of $127,000, and completing 2,500 hours of community service — helping the FBI fight other DDoS attacks.
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Photo: DD Images / Shutterstock
