3 hackers plead guilty for developing melaware that temporarily crashed the web in 2016

Three hackers have pleaded guilty in a New Jersey court to have links with a botnet that temporarily crashed the web and hugely affected sites like Netflix, Spotify, Twitter, Reddit, and Amazon in October of 2016.

Paras Jha, 21, of Fanwood, New Jersey, this week pleaded guilty in a New Jersey court to violating the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act when he created the Mirai malware.

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Jha’s plea agreement reveals that he created Mirai’s code some time around July 2016. He also rented Mirai to others, and even set up a company with White to help rescue businesses affected by the botnet, “like firemen getting paid to put out the fires they started,” as Krebs put it.

Two other men, Josiah White and Dalton Norman, also entered guilty pleas for using the botnet for criminal gain.

Mirai infected more than 300,000 connected devices globally and was used in multiple DDoS attacks on various online services carried out by Jha and others.

 

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