An Oregon man has been charged in a federal criticism at the moment on allegations of working a botnet for rent that performed cyberattacks starting a minimum of in 2021. Ethan Foltz has been accused of working Rapper Bot, often known as Eleven Eleven Botnet and CowBot, and utilizing it to execute coordinated distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults. The criticism claims that Rapper Bot was used to focus on victims in additional than 80 nations, and since April 2025, it has reportedly performed greater than 370,000 assaults in opposition to 18,000 distinctive victims.
"Rapper Bot was one of the crucial highly effective DDoS botnets to ever exist," US Lawyer Michael J. Heyman for the District of Alaska stated. "Our workplace stays dedicated to disrupting and dismantling cyber criminals that threaten web safety and infrastructure within the District of Alaska and throughout america."
One among Rapper Bot's alleged victims was X, which was taken down by a DDoS assault in March. On the time, proprietor Elon Musk made unsubstantiated claims in regards to the assault being perpetrated by a "giant, coordinated group and/or a rustic" and that it stemmed from IP addresses in Ukraine, though safety researchers stated it was attainable the social community had left servers unsecured.
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/prosecutors-charge-man-who-allegedly-used-botnet-to-take-down-x-this-spring-202312254.html?src=rss