One of the hackers behind a botnet variant of Miraihas pleaded guilty to participating in a massive DDoS attack that caused a massive Internet in October 2016. Several high-profile sites and online services, including Amazon, PayPal, Visa, Netflix, PlayStation Network and Airbnb, were taken offline after the DDoS attack. The botnet was developed by the then-minor defendant and other hackers between 2015 and November 2016, with the aim of infecting platforms . The hackers infected webcams, recording devices and other IoT (Internet-of-Things) devices.
As reported by BleepingComputer, over 100,000 infected devices were used in the attack. The defendant, who was a minor at the time of the attacks, and his co-conspirators targeted Sony’s PlayStation Network gaming platform with their massive DDoS attack, while also affecting the systems of DNS provider “Dyn”.
This attack resulted in many of the sites and services that use Dyn's DNS servers being taken down the next day, while the DNS provider worked to restore the main DNS servers targeted by the cybercriminal botnet.
The DDoS attack that hit Dyn in 2016 led to a massive Internet disruption, which later spread to hundreds of thousands of sites that used the DNS provider's services. Among the sites affected were dozens of high-profile websites and online platforms that suffered major financial losses due to the high cost of restoration.
The massive DDoS attack indirectly affected Dyn's servers and hit a significant portion of the Internet in both North America and Europe along with Sony's PlayStation Network, which was the primary target of the attack.
According to court documents, on October 21, 2016, the defendant and his co-conspirators used the botnet they created to carry out numerous DDoS attacks in an attempt to take down Sony's PlayStation Network gaming platform for an extended period of time.
The defendant's identity was kept secret as he was a minor at the time he orchestrated the massive DDoS attack. His trial is scheduled for January 7, 2021.
