How Mirai Took Down Half the Internet (Part 4 of 6)

On October 21st, 2016, half the internet went dark. Mirai was the weapon. But the trio that built Mirai wasn't behind it. Around 7am Eastern, Dyn, a major DNS provider for the US East Coast, came under massive DDoS attack in three waves throughout the day. Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, GitHub, Netflix, and PayPal all went offline for hours. There was widespread speculation about a nation-state attack, with the US election two weeks away. But when the FBI dug in, the Dyn attack traffic didn't match the fingerprints from the Krebs or OVH attacks. With Mirai's source code public for three weeks, anyone could run their own copy, and somebody had. The FBI eventually concluded the attack probably wasn't aiming at Twitter or Spotify at all. The actual target appears to have been a video-game service that happened to use Dyn for DNS. The rest of the internet was collateral damage. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS_attacks_on_Dyn https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/source-code-for-iot-botnet-mirai-released/ https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brought-down-the-internet/ More on cybersecurity, privacy, scams, and homelab on Hake Hardware. New shorts every weekday. #cybersecurity #mirai #botnet