How the FBI Tracked Down the Mirai Trio (Part 5 of 6)

How did a small FBI field office in Anchorage, Alaska end up running the investigation that caught the trio behind Mirai? Because Alaska had enough Mirai-infected IoT devices that the case landed there. Lead agent Elliott Peterson's team called the suspects the 'Cub Scout Pack' for their youth. In parallel, Brian Krebs at KrebsOnSecurity was running his own investigation. A tip from an industry contact about code on a GitHub account called Dreadiscool led him to compare Hackforums skills lists to Paras Jha's LinkedIn profile. A specific Gmail address linked Anna-Senpai to a Facebook account belonging to someone studying computer engineering at Rutgers in 2015. Krebs wasn't analyzing the malware. He was following the people behind it. In January 2017, he published the unmasking. The FBI was already on the same trail. By December 2017, all three had pleaded guilty. Sources: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/who-is-anna-senpai-the-mirai-worm-author/ https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brought-down-the-internet/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/mirai-iot-botnet-co-authors-plead-guilty/ More on cybersecurity, privacy, scams, and homelab on Hake Hardware. New shorts every weekday. #cybersecurity #mirai #botnet