Oregon man indicted for operating Rapper Bot DDoS botnet

A 22-year-old Oregon man has been charged in a federal indictment with operating Rapper Bot, a sprawling DDoS-for-hire botnet that investigators say infected tens of thousands of devices and carried out hundreds of thousands of attacks across more than 80 countries since 2021. The case, tied to a wider international crackdown, culminated in an Aug. 6 takedown that disrupted one of the most powerful online disruptors ever observed and led authorities to seize control of the botnet’s infrastructure.

Prosecutors say Rapper Bot leveraged a network of compromised devices, including digital video recorders, routers, cameras and other internet-connected hardware, to unleash massive denial-of-service campaigns. At its peak, the botnet controlled roughly 65,000 to 95,000 infected devices and could generate two to three terabits of data per second, with some attacks potentially exceeding six terabits per second. From 2021 onward, the operators offered the service to paying customers, deploying campaigns that targeted about 18,000 distinct victims in more than 80 countries and, according to prosecutors, even touched a U.S. government network and major technology and media firms. One...