UK Police Arrest Suspect Behind Mirai Malware Attacks On Deutsche Telekom (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "German police announced Thursday that fellow UK police officers have arrested a suspect behind a serious cyber-attack that crippled German ISP Deutsche Telekom at the end of November 2016," according to BleepingComputer. "The attack in question caused over 900,000 routers of various makes and models to go offline after a mysterious attacker attempted to hijack the devices through a series of vulnerabilities..." The attacks were later linked to a cybercrime groups operating a botnet powered by the Mirai malware, known as Botnet #14, which was also available for hire online for on-demand DDoS attacks.

"According to a statement obtained by Bleeping Computer from Bundeskriminalamt (the German Federal Criminal Police Office), officers from UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) arrested a 29-year-old suspect at a London airport... German authorities are now in the process of requesting the unnamed suspect's extradition, so he can stand trial in Germany. Bestbuy, the name of the hacker that took credit for the attacks, has been unreachable for days."

Comments

enjoy your stay!

[v1]

the hacker that took credit for the attacks, has been unreachable for days."

Yeah, it's hard to answer emails with those handcuffs on like that.

Here's hoping you get extradited, successfully prosecuted, and turned into a good example for aspiring black-hats.

Re:It's always bugged me.

[Knuckles]

Why does every German word seem to have double the number of letters that it really needs? It has to be terribly inefficient, this from a society that is extremely efficient in most things.

That would be because you have no idea about German. Yes, German sentences tend to be a bit longer than English ones, but you can't measure efficiency this way. Also Federal Criminal Police Office in TFS is longer than Bundeskriminalamt

Re:Hacking for money will always remain profitable

[lactose99]

...but but but that would add cumbersome regulations to business and discourage innovation!

At least that's how some try to phrase it

Re:It's always bugged me.

[prefec2]

On what vocabulary do you base your assessment? "Deutsche Telekom" means literally "German Telecom" and Bundes-kriminal-amt is translated to German Federal Criminal Police Office, literally Federal Detective Office.

Re:It's always bugged me.

[prefec2]

Not really. There are more ch and sh sounds by vocabulary, but not necessarily in spoken language. It might be helpful to conclude the sound of German based on Hitler speeches, Höcke speeches and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Make it Your-self

[Neuronwelder]

This is the reason you make your own routers. You, you are the one who checks for vulnerabilities. Not some other country that could care less about you.

So it wasn't the Russians, for once?

[ffkom]

Didn't the press insinuate time and again this hack - like so many - must have been done by "the Russians2?

Examples:
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/med...
https://www.welt.de/debatte/ko...
https://www.welt.de/politik/de...

Re:So it wasn't the Russians, for once?

[AHuxley]

The BND works with the NSA. The BND really don't want too many people in the EU or Germany or German gov working out their skill set or what they do with/for the NSA.
http://www.dw.com/en/merkel-te... (16.02.2017)
So the constant political talking point of the "Russian" ip range, timezone, code litter is politically better to have in the international and local tech media.
If not Germans might ask about the quality of data protection and network security in Germany.
Talking about Russia keep Germany asking about new German data protection laws, German funding to counter all advanced private sector crypto, networks, security funding, domestic politics, jobs, domestic telco security issues.
Then reality finally emerges and the tech media talking points are exposed.