Mirai malware is very dangerous of all the malware currently plaguing the internet because it converts Internet of Things (IoT) devices into botnets and later utilizes them for launching (distributed denial-of-service) DDoS attacks. This is why every single attack that is carried out using Mirai malware is huge and conducted at a massive scale.
What is Mirai and how does it work?
Mirai is a type of malware that targets consumer devices like smart cameras and home routers, turning them into a zombie network of remote controlled bots. Mirai botnets are used by cybercriminals to target computer systems in massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
What is Mirai malware?
Upon infecting a device, Mirai looks for other malware on that device and wipes it out, in order to claim the gadget as its own Mirai's code contains a few Russian-language strings—which, as we later learned, were a red herring about its ultimate origins
Why are Mirai attacks attractive to hackers?
This doesn’t account for 100 percent of Mirai activity, but certainly there are some aspects that make these personal devices attractive to attackers. Large Numbers of Devices – Most people have a single computer, but they probably also have multiple internet-enabled appliances.
What is the Mirai botnet attack?
Thinkstock On October 12, 2016, a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack left much of the internet inaccessible on the U.S. east coast. The attack, which authorities initially feared was the work of a hostile nation-state, was in fact the work of the Mirai botnet.
How does Mirai DDoS work?
Mirai is a type of malware that targets consumer devices like smart cameras and home routers, turning them into a zombie network of remote controlled bots. Mirai botnets are used by cybercriminals to target computer systems in massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
What type of network attack is Mirai malware used for?
What is Mirai? Mirai is malware that infects smart devices that run on ARC processors, turning them into a network of remotely controlled bots or "zombies". This network of bots, called a botnet, is often used to launch DDoS attacks.
Is Mirai a DDoS style botnet?
The Mirai botnet was first found in August 2016 by MalwareMustDie, a white hat malware research group, and has been used in some of the largest and most disruptive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, including an attack on 20 September 2016 on computer security journalist Brian Krebs' web site, an attack on ...
What type of malware is popular for DDoS attacks?
BotnetsBotnets. Botnets are the millions of systems infected with malware under hacker control in order to carry out DDoS attacks. These bots or zombie systems are used to carry out attacks against the target systems, often overwhelming the target system's bandwidth and processing capabilities.
What vulnerability did the Mirai botnet exploit?
Mirai botnet operators are often quick to add newly disclosed vulnerabilities to their exploit arsenal. The botnet was also recently spotted exploiting the Log4Shell vulnerability. Several cybersecurity companies have provided tools and other free resources that can be useful to defenders dealing with Spring4Shell.
What was the impact of Mirai botnet?
Mirai malware was implicated in a cyber attack in October of 2016. The botnet turned to a website for Dun, which offers domain name system services. The company hosted big-name websites, including Wired. When it went down due to overwhelming traffic due to IoT devices, much of the East Coast went down as well.
How does the Mirai botnet spread?
Mirai spread by first entering a quick scanning stage where it proliferates by haphazardly sending TCP SYN probes to pseudo-random IPv4 addresses, on Telnet TCP ports 23 and 2323. Once Mirai discovers open Telnet ports, it tries to infect the devices by brute forcing the login credentials.
Who made the Mirai botnet?
In September, three men -- Josiah White, Paras Jha and Dalton Norman -- were each sentenced to five years of probation and 2,500 hours of community service for their roles in creating and deploying the Mirai botnet malware.
How many devices did Mirai infect?
Mirai's attack peaked at an unprecedented 1Tbps and is estimated to have used about 145,000 devices within the assault. This attack set the scale for how massive the botnet had become, with the second largest attack peaking around 400 Gbps.
Why do hackers use DDoS attacks?
With DDoS, the attacker's main goal is to make your website inaccessible using botnets. Botnets are basically an army of connected devices that are infected with malware. Your website's server becomes overloaded and exhausted of its available bandwidth because of this army.
How are DDoS attacks performed?
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurs when multiple machines are operating together to attack one target. DDoS attackers often leverage the use of a botnet—a group of hijacked internet-connected devices to carry out large scale attacks.
Why do DDoS attacks happen?
A DDoS attack is a type of cyberthreat based on sending too many requests to an online resource, forcing that site or resource offline. The attacker takes advantage of a vast network of computers to create this pressure, often by using “zombie” machines they have taken over through malware.
Which attack makes the use of botnet?
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks One of the more common types of botnet attacks is a DDoS attack – which is carried out by having bots overload a server with web traffic in order to crash it. The downtime in the server's operation caused by bots can also be exploited by launching additional botnet attacks.
What service was targeted in the Mirai attack which stopped customers accessing the services?
provider DYNOn October 21, a Mirai attack targeted the popular DNS provider DYN. This event prevented Internet users from accessing many popular websites, including AirBnB, Amazon, Github, HBO, Netflix, Paypal, Reddit, and Twitter, by disturbing the DYN name-resolution service.
What is the DDoS attack?
DDoS Attack means "Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attack" and it is a cybercrime in which the attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites.
What was the triple threat attack?
After encrypting victim networks, ransomware threat actors increasingly used “triple extortion” by threatening to (1) publicly release stolen sensitive information, (2) disrupt the victim's internet access, and/or (3) inform the victim's partners, shareholders, or suppliers about the incident.
How does Mirai help?
The last thing I should mention is how Mirai can be used to improve the operation of botnets that are embedded in the initial code. Mirai does a few things to protect itself from discovery. It’ll delete itself from the file system once the malware is running. It deletes itself from the running process.
What is the Mirai botnet?
The Mirai internet of things (IoT) botnet is infamous for targeting connected household consumer products. It attaches itself to cameras, alarm systems and personal routers, and spreads quickly. The damage can be quite substantial. People might not realize that their internet-enabled webcam was actually responsible for attacking Netflix.
What is Mirai's behavior pattern?
Another interesting behavior pattern is that the malware attempts to protect itself from competing botnets. As soon as it breaks into the system, it tries to prevent anyone else from breaking in using any other methods. Once in place, Mirai looks for certain identifiers associated with competing botnets.
How many activities are there in Mirai?
The Mirai scanning workflow can be broken down into three primary activities.
What does the bot master do?
The bot master issues an attack command to the command and control server.
What are the three workflows in Mirai?
Now let’s take a look at the high level topology of Mirai. There are three distinct workflows that are going on: scanning, infection and attack.
Is Mirai a malware program?
That’s Mirai in a nutshell. It’s a highly complex and nuanced malware program. For further details (including additional questions from the audience), I encourage everyone to watch the webinar presentation.
Original Mirai Botnet
In December last year, 21-year old Paras Jha, along with his two college-age friends Josiah White and Dalton Norman, pleaded guilty for creating the Mirai botnet.
Other Mirai Variants
Early variants of Mirai include Satori, a Mirai variant that morphed into several versions as well. One version of Satori targets Huawei home router HG532. Satori was first observed in the wild by Check Point researchers in November 2017.
Prevention
Here are some measures in preventing attackers from turning your organization’s IoT devices into a zombie soldier for DDoS attacks:
What is Mirai malware?
What is Mirai? The malware explained. Mirai is a piece of software that is used to form a malicious botnet; a large number of connected devices (bots) that can be controlled to attack others on the Internet. This is done without the owner’s consent. Generally, these attacks take the form of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
What kind of attacks is Mirai carrying out?
First, it’s worth noting that there is not a single Mirai botnet. Many people have started running their own botnets, limiting the maximum size and power of any one of them.
What makes Mirai different?
Botnets have been around for several years. Mirai is different in a couple of important respects.
How is Mirai infecting devices?
The mechanism that Mirai uses to infect devices isn’t even a hack or exploit as such – it’s just logging into the device with a known set of credentials.
How do I remove Mirai?
The original version of Mirai does not have any mechanism to survive a reboot of the device. Restarting the device will therefore remove Mirai.
What is telnet in Mirai?
Telnet is an outdated protocol used to remotely administer servers. Mirai connects via telnet and attempts to login using a list of 60 known credentials. If the login is successful, the bot software is installed. It’s that simple.
What port is Mirai infected with?
In the very near term, close off all access to port 23 on the affected device. This will stop Mirai infecting the device again.
What is a botnet attack?
A botnet attack happens when attackers remotely control malware-infected devices, often known as botnets, with an intent to carry out financial theft, information theft, denial of services, and other scams. Malware is malicious code designed to damage computers or applications by exploiting security vulnerabilities in the operating system.
How does the Mirai botnet work?
Mirai is a malware (self-propagating worm). Using a table of more than sixty factory default login credentials, the malware scans the IoT devices and infects them so that a central set of command and control (C&C) servers can control them to launch DDoS attacks.
What is Mirai malware?
Mirai was another iteration of a series of malware botnet packages developed by Jha and his friends. Jha, who loved anime and posted online under the name "Anna-Senpai," named it Mirai (Japanese for "the future", 未来), after the anime series Mirai Nikki, or "future diary." It encapsulated some clever techniques, including the list of hardcoded passwords. But, in the words of an FBI agent who investigated the attacks, "These kids are super smart, but they didn’t do anything high level—they just had a good idea."
Why does Mirai need to be rebooted?
Because Mirai stores itself in memory, rebooting the device is enough to purge any potential infection, although infected devices are generally re-infected swiftly. Therefore, the recommendation is to change the password to something stronger before rebooting if you have any vulnerable devices.
What is an IoT botnet?
But another tempting target is out there for botnet builders: Internet of things (IoT) devices, a blanket term for various gadgets that most people don't think of as computers, but that still have processing power and an internet connection. These devices, ranging from home routers to security cameras to baby monitors, often include an embedded, stripped down Linux system. They also often have no built-in ability to be patched remotely and are in physically remote or inaccessible locations.
How many IoT devices were there in 2017?
By 2017, there were 8.4 billion of these "things" out there on the internet, ripe for the plucking. Mirai took advantage of these insecure IoT devices in a simple but clever way. Rather than attempting to use complex wizardry to track down IoT gadgets, it scanned big blocks of the internet for open Telnet ports, then attempted to log in using 61 username/password combos that are frequently used as the default for these devices and never changed. In this way, it was able to amass an army of compromised closed-circuit TV cameras and routers, ready to do its bidding.
What was the Thinkstock attack?
Thinkstock. On October 12, 2016, a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack left much of the internet inaccessible on the U.S. east coast. The attack, which authorities initially feared was the work of a hostile nation-state, was in fact the work of the Mirai botnet. This attack, which initially had much less grand ambitions — ...
When did Mirai first attack?
Mirai's first big wave of attacks came on September 19, 2016, and was used against the French host OVH — because, as it later turned out, OVH hosted a popular tool that Minecraft server hosts use to fight against DDoS attacks.
Can Mirai botnets be used for DDoS?
Mirai botnet source code. And yes , you read that right: the Mirai botnet code was released into the wild. That means that anyone can use it to try their luck infecting IoT devices (most of which are still unprotected) and launching DDoS attacks against their enemies, or selling that power to the highest bidder.
A DDoS Botnet
Evolving The DDoS Attack
- But there’s been a major shift over time in the motivation of the people behind the DDoS attacks. Instead of simply trafficking in spam, botnet operators have figured out a way to monetize their efforts through extortion or by launching a DDoS-for-hire platform like Mirai. When people talk about Mirai they often talk about the emerging threat cause...
Preparing The Attack
- The scanning workflow is responsible for identifying potential new members for inclusion in the botnet. They consist of the botnet nodes, a report server and the random systems on the internet that are being probed. The Mirai scanning workflow can be broken down into three primary activities. 1. SYN Port Scan– probing the internet to identify possible targets 2. Brute Force Auth…
Deploying The Malware
- So how does the Mirai malware actually gets on to IoT devices in the first place? The infection workflow follows this pathway. 1. Scan success identified 2. Loader receives data 3. Loader pushes malware It is worth noting at this point that the malware code is cross-compiled on a variety of architectures. The loader attempts to identify the architecture of the device and load t…
Repeating The Attack
- The actual attack workflow is shown in the flowchart below which illustrates the functionality that’s responsible for activating the DDoS attacks on the nodes inside the botnet. The process consists of three primary activities. 1. The bot master issues an attack command to the command and control server. 2. The command and control system tells each node in the botnet to launch …
Covering Tracks and Blocking Competitors
- The last thing I should mention is how Mirai can be used to improve the operation of botnets that are embedded in the initial code. Mirai does a few things to protect itself from discovery. It’ll delete itself from the file system once the malware is running. It deletes itself from the running process. And finally, it alters its name to a randomized value. Another interesting behavior patter…