What’s new: A 22-year-old man from Oregon, Ethan J. Foltz, has been arrested for allegedly operating “Rapper Bot,” a botnet used for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The botnet reportedly consisted of tens of thousands of compromised Internet of Things (IoT) devices and was involved in significant attacks, including one that caused outages on Twitter/X in March 2025. Foltz and an accomplice allegedly rented the botnet to online extortionists, conducting over 370,000 attacks against 18,000 unique victims.
Who’s affected
Victims of the Rapper Bot attacks include online businesses, particularly gambling operations based in China, as well as various networks in the United States, Japan, Ireland, and Hong Kong. The attacks have the potential to cause severe financial and operational disruptions for targeted organizations.
What to do
- Implement robust DDoS mitigation strategies, including overprovisioning bandwidth and utilizing DDoS defense technologies.
- Regularly update and secure IoT devices to prevent them from being compromised and added to botnets.
- Monitor network traffic for unusual spikes that may indicate a DDoS attack.
- Consider engaging with cybersecurity professionals to assess vulnerabilities and improve overall security posture.
