How the Mirai Trio Avoided Prison (Part 6 of 6)

In September 2018, all three Mirai authors were sentenced in Anchorage federal court. Five years probation. 2,500 hours of community service. $127,000 in restitution. No prison time. The reason: they'd been cooperating with the FBI since the moment they were caught. Federal prosecutors told the court the trio's cooperation had been extraordinary — helping identify other cybercriminals, operators of other botnets, and thwarting active attacks. By sentencing, they'd collectively put in more than a thousand hours of work for the US government. Separately, Jha got 6 months of house arrest and $8.6 million in restitution for the Rutgers attacks. But Mirai's source code is still out there. Most IoT botnets operating today are descendants of Mirai, running the same playbook: brute-force default passwords, take over the device, kill competing infections. Three teenagers built a tool to dominate the Minecraft DDoS market, and a decade later, the descendants of that tool are running the largest IoT botnets ever recorded. Sources: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/mirai-botnet-authors-avoid-jail-time/ https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-botnet-creators-fbi-sentencing/ https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/computer-hacker-who-launched-attacks-rutgers-university-ordered-pay-86m-restitution More on cybersecurity, privacy, scams, and homelab on Hake Hardware. New shorts every weekday. #cybersecurity #mirai #botnet