A 22-year-old Oregon man has been arrested on suspicion of working “Rapper Bot,” an enormous botnet used to energy a service for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults in opposition to 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 legislation enforcement by guaranteeing 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) units.
The grievance in opposition to Foltz explains the assaults often clocked in at greater than two terabits of junk information per second (a terabit is one trillion bits of information), which is greater than sufficient site visitors to trigger severe issues for all however probably the most well-defended targets. The federal government says Rapper Bot constantly launched assaults that had been “tons of of instances bigger than the anticipated capability of a typical server situated in an information heart,” 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 triggered intermittent outages on Twitter/X. The federal government says Rapper Bot’s most profitable and frequent prospects had been concerned in extorting on-line companies — together with quite a few playing operations primarily based in China.
The legal grievance was written by Elliott Peterson, an investigator with the Protection Legal Investigative Service (DCIS), the legal investigative division of the Division of Protection (DoD) Workplace of Inspector Basic. The grievance notes the DCIS acquired concerned as a result of a number of Web addresses maintained by the DoD had been the goal of Rapper Bot assaults.
Peterson mentioned 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 through 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 continually 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 legislation enforcement investigators whereas their opponents had been getting busted.
Particularly, the 2 hackers chatted about a Could 20 assault in opposition to KrebsOnSecurity.com that clocked in at greater than 6.3 terabits of information per second. The transient 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 Mission Defend, a free DDoS protection service that Google gives to web sites providing information, human rights, and election-related content material).
The Could 2025 DDoS was launched by an IoT botnet referred to 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 identified on-line as “Forky,” and Forky advised me he wasn’t afraid of me or U.S. federal investigators. However, the grievance in opposition to Foltz notes that Forky’s botnet appeared to decrease in dimension 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 in search of actions, probably the most excessive of which, of their view, was to launch DDoS assaults in opposition to the web site of the outstanding cyber safety journalist Brian Krebs,” Peterson wrote within the legal 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 in opposition to Krebs isn’t a great transfer,” Slaykings concurred. “It isn’t about being a [expletive] or afraid, you simply get lots of issues for zero cash. Infantile, however good. Allow them to die.”
“Ye, it’s good tho, they’ll die,” Foltz replied.
The federal government states that simply previous to Foltz’s arrest, Rapper Bot had enslaved an estimated 65,000 units globally. That will sound like quite a bit, however the grievance notes the defendants weren’t concerned about 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” dimension — guaranteeing that “the variety of units 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 may be very revenge. He gained’t cease till they’re [expletive] to the bone.”
“Stunned they’ve any bots left,” Foltz answered.
“Krebs isn’t the one you wish to have in your again. Not as a result of he’s scary or one thing, simply because he is not going to hand over UNTIL you might be [expletive] [expletive]. Proved it with Mirai and lots of different circumstances.”
[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 full variety of assaults, prospects and targets of this huge crime machine. However the information that was nonetheless accessible confirmed that from April 2025 to early August, Rapper Bot performed over 370,000 assaults, focusing on 18,000 distinctive victims throughout 1,000 networks, with the majority of victims residing in China, Japan, america, Eire and Hong Kong (in that order).
Based on the federal government, Rapper Bot borrows a lot of its code from fBot, a DDoS malware pressure also referred to 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 in search of Sterritt’s extradition to america. 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 prospects to launch assaults that had been greater than 60 seconds in period — one other manner they tried to maintain public consideration to the botnet at a minimal. Nevertheless, the federal government says the proprietors additionally had particular preparations with sure high-paying shoppers 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 considered 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 price and disruption that such sieges can deliver. 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 an internet site, utilizing companies resembling load balancers, and paying for each outgoing and incoming information, at estimated business common charges the assault (2+ Terabits per second instances 30 seconds) might need price the sufferer anyplace from $500 to $10,000.”
“DDoS assaults at this scale usually expose victims to devastating monetary affect, and a possible different, community engineering options that mitigate the anticipated assaults resembling overprovisioning, i.e. rising 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 go away 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 units that had been weak to a beforehand unknown exploit.
Foltz and Slaykings discussing the invention of an IoT vulnerability that may give them 32,000 new units.
Shortly earlier than the search warrant was served on his residence, Foltz allegedly advised his companion that “As soon as once more we’ve got the most important botnet in the neighborhood.” The next day, Foltz advised his companion that it was going to be an ideal day — the most important up to now by way of revenue 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. Legal professional Adam Alexander within the District of Alaska (at the very least a number of the units discovered to be contaminated with Rapper Bot had been situated there, and it’s the place Peterson is stationed). Foltz faces one depend of aiding and abetting laptop intrusions. If convicted, he faces a most penalty of 10 years in jail, though a federal decide is unlikely to award anyplace close to that form of sentence for a first-time conviction.
