The US Justice Department has successfully dismantled four major botnets responsible for launching significant distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that infected millions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices globally. These botnets, known as Aisuru, KimWolf, JackSkid, and Mossad, were operated on a ‘cybercrime-as-a-service’ model, allowing cybercriminals to exploit vulnerabilities in IoT devices and extort victims for payments.
The operation targeted botnets that infected various IoT devices like digital video recorders, web cameras, and Wi-Fi routers, with attacks reaching up to 30 terabits per second, setting record-breaking levels of disruption. These botnets leveraged a ‘cybercrime-as-a-service’ approach, offering access to compromised devices to other malicious actors for launching DDoS attacks.
Victims of these attacks suffered significant financial losses, with some reporting damages in the tens of thousands of dollars due to remediation expenses. The botnet operators issued hundreds of thousands of attack commands, highlighting the scale and impact of these DDoS operations.
Source: mint – technology