A 22-year-old Oregon man has been arrested on suspicion of working “Rapper Bot,” a large botnet used to energy a service for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults towards targets — together with a March 2025 DDoS that knocked Twitter/X offline. The Justice Division asserts the suspect and an unidentified co-conspirator rented out the botnet to on-line extortionists, and tried to remain off the radar of regulation enforcement by making certain that their botnet was by no means pointed at KrebsOnSecurity.
The management panel for the Rapper Bot botnet greets customers with the message “Welcome to the Ball Pit, Now with fridge assist,” an obvious reference to a handful of IoT-enabled fridges that had been enslaved of their DDoS botnet.
On August 6, 2025, federal brokers arrested Ethan J. Foltz of Springfield, Ore. on suspicion of working Rapper Bot, a globally dispersed assortment of tens of hundreds of hacked Web of Issues (IoT) gadgets.
The grievance towards Foltz explains the assaults normally clocked in at greater than two terabits of junk knowledge per second (a terabit is one trillion bits of information), which is greater than sufficient visitors to trigger critical issues for all however essentially the most well-defended targets. The federal government says Rapper Bot persistently launched assaults that had been “lots of of instances bigger than the anticipated capability of a typical server positioned in an information middle,” and that a few of its greatest assaults exceeded six terabits per second.
Certainly, Rapper Bot was reportedly accountable for the March 10, 2025 assault that induced intermittent outages on Twitter/X. The federal government says Rapper Bot’s most profitable and frequent clients had been concerned in extorting on-line companies — together with quite a few playing operations based mostly in China.
The prison grievance was written by Elliott Peterson, an investigator with the Protection Prison Investigative Service (DCIS), the prison investigative division of the Division of Protection (DoD) Workplace of Inspector Common. The grievance notes the DCIS obtained concerned as a result of a number of Web addresses maintained by the DoD had been the goal of Rapper Bot assaults.
Peterson stated he tracked Rapper Bot to Foltz after a subpoena to an ISP in Arizona that was internet hosting one of many botnet’s management servers confirmed the account was paid for by way of PayPal. Extra authorized course of to PayPal revealed Foltz’s Gmail account and beforehand used IP addresses. A subpoena to Google confirmed the defendant searched safety blogs always for information about Rapper Bot, and for updates about competing DDoS-for-hire botnets.
Based on the grievance, after having a search warrant served on his residence the defendant admitted to constructing and working Rapper Bot, sharing the earnings 50/50 with an individual he claimed to know solely by the hacker deal with “Slaykings.” Foltz additionally shared with investigators the logs from his Telegram chats, whereby Foltz and Slaykings mentioned how finest to remain off the radar of regulation enforcement investigators whereas their opponents had been getting busted.
Particularly, the 2 hackers chatted about a Might 20 assault towards KrebsOnSecurity.com that clocked in at greater than 6.3 terabits of information per second. The temporary assault was notable as a result of on the time it was the most important DDoS that Google had ever mitigated (KrebsOnSecurity sits behind the safety of Challenge Protect, a free DDoS protection service that Google supplies to web sites providing information, human rights, and election-related content material).
The Might 2025 DDoS was launched by an IoT botnet known as Aisuru, which I found was operated by a 21-year-old man in Brazil named Kaike Southier Leite. This particular person was extra generally recognized on-line as “Forky,” and Forky advised me he wasn’t afraid of me or U.S. federal investigators. Nonetheless, the grievance towards Foltz notes that Forky’s botnet appeared to decrease in measurement and firepower on the similar time that Rapper Bot’s an infection numbers had been on the upswing.
“Each FOLTZ and Slaykings had been very dismissive of consideration looking for actions, essentially the most excessive of which, of their view, was to launch DDoS assaults towards the web site of the outstanding cyber safety journalist Brian Krebs,” Peterson wrote within the prison grievance.
“You see, they’ll get themselves [expletive],” Slaykings wrote in response to Foltz’s feedback about Forky and Aisuru bringing an excessive amount of warmth on themselves.
“Prob cuz [redacted] hit krebs,” Foltz wrote in reply.
“Going towards Krebs isn’t a superb transfer,” Slaykings concurred. “It isn’t about being a [expletive] or afraid, you simply get plenty of issues for zero cash. Infantile, however good. Allow them to die.”
“Ye, it’s good tho, they may die,” Foltz replied.
The federal government states that simply previous to Foltz’s arrest, Rapper Bot had enslaved an estimated 65,000 gadgets globally. Which will sound like quite a bit, however the grievance notes the defendants weren’t all for making headlines for constructing the world’s largest or strongest botnet.
Fairly the opposite: The grievance asserts that the accused took care to take care of their botnet in a “Goldilocks” measurement — making certain that “the variety of gadgets afforded highly effective assaults whereas nonetheless being manageable to regulate and, within the hopes of Foltz and his companions, sufficiently small to not be detected.”
The grievance states that a number of days later, Foltz and Slaykings returned to discussing what that they anticipated to befall their rival group, with Slaykings stating, “Krebs could be very revenge. He gained’t cease till they’re [expletive] to the bone.”
“Stunned they’ve any bots left,” Foltz answered.
“Krebs just isn’t the one you need to have in your again. Not as a result of he’s scary or one thing, simply because he won’t quit UNTIL you’re [expletive] [expletive]. Proved it with Mirai and lots of different instances.”
[Unknown expletives aside, that may well be the highest compliment I’ve ever been paid by a cybercriminal. I might even have part of that quote made into a t-shirt or mug or something. It’s also nice that they didn’t let any of their customers attack my site — if even only out of a paranoid sense of self-preservation.]
Foltz admitted to wiping the consumer and assault logs for the botnet roughly as soon as per week, so investigators had been unable to tally the entire variety of assaults, clients and targets of this huge crime machine. However the knowledge that was nonetheless obtainable confirmed that from April 2025 to early August, Rapper Bot carried out over 370,000 assaults, concentrating on 18,000 distinctive victims throughout 1,000 networks, with the majority of victims residing in China, Japan, the US, Eire and Hong Kong (in that order).
Based on the federal government, Rapperbot borrows a lot of its code from fBot, a DDoS malware pressure often known as Satori. In 2020, authorities in Northern Eire charged a then 20-year-old man named Aaron “Vamp” Sterritt with working fBot with a co-conspirator. U.S. prosecutors are nonetheless looking for Sterritt’s extradition to the US. fBot is itself a variation of the Mirai IoT botnet that has ravaged the Web with DDoS assaults since its supply code was leaked again in 2016.
The grievance says Foltz and his companion didn’t enable most clients to launch assaults that had been greater than 60 seconds in period — one other approach they tried to maintain public consideration to the botnet at a minimal. Nonetheless, the federal government says the proprietors additionally had particular preparations with sure high-paying purchasers that allowed a lot bigger and longer assaults.
The accused and his alleged companion made gentle of this weblog submit in regards to the fallout from certainly one of their botnet assaults.
Most individuals who’ve by no means been on the receiving finish of a monster DDoS assault don’t know of the associated fee and disruption that such sieges can carry. The DCIS’s Peterson wrote that he was in a position to check the botnet’s capabilities whereas interviewing Foltz, and that discovered that “if this had been a server upon which I used to be operating a web site, utilizing providers reminiscent of load balancers, and paying for each outgoing and incoming knowledge, at estimated trade common charges the assault (2+ Terabits per second instances 30 seconds) might need value the sufferer wherever from $500 to $10,000.”
“DDoS assaults at this scale typically expose victims to devastating monetary impression, and a possible various, community engineering options that mitigate the anticipated assaults reminiscent of overprovisioning, i.e. growing potential Web capability, or DDoS protection applied sciences, can themselves be prohibitively costly,” the grievance continues. “This ‘rock and a tough place’ actuality for a lot of victims can depart them acutely uncovered to extortion calls for – ‘pay X {dollars} and the DDoS assaults cease’.”
The Telegram chat information present that the day earlier than Peterson and different federal brokers raided Foltz’s residence, Foltz allegedly advised his companion he’d discovered 32,000 new gadgets that had been weak to a beforehand unknown exploit.
Foltz and Slaykings discussing the invention of an IoT vulnerability that can give them 32,000 new gadgets.
Shortly earlier than the search warrant was served on his residence, Foltz allegedly advised his companion that “As soon as once more we’ve the largest botnet locally.” The next day, Foltz advised his companion that it was going to be an excellent day — the largest to this point when it comes to earnings generated by Rapper Bot.
“I sat subsequent to Foltz whereas the messages poured in — guarantees of $800, then $1,000, the proceeds ticking up because the day went on,” Peterson wrote. “Noticing a change in Foltz’ conduct and anxious that Foltz was making modifications to the botnet configuration in actual time, Slaykings requested him ‘What’s up?’ Foltz deftly typed out some fast responses. Reassured by Foltz’ reply, Slaykings responded, ‘Okay, I’m the paranoid one.”
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Lawyer Adam Alexander within the District of Alaska (at the very least among the gadgets discovered to be contaminated with Rapper Bot had been positioned there, and it’s the place Peterson is stationed). Foltz faces one depend of aiding and abetting pc intrusions. If convicted, he faces a most penalty of 10 years in jail, though a federal choose is unlikely to award wherever close to that form of sentence for a first-time conviction.
