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Author of BrickerBot Malware Retires, Says He Bricked 10 Million IoT Devices (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The author of BrickerBot -- the malware that bricks IoT devices -- has announced his retirement in an email to Bleeping Computer, also claiming to have bricked over 10 million devices since he started the "Internet Chemotherapy" project in November 2016. Similar to the authors of the Mirai malware, the BrickerBot developer dumped his malware's source code online, allowing other crooks to profit from his code. The code is said to contain at least one zero-day. In a farewell message left on hundreds of hacked routers, the BrickerBot author also published a list of incidents (ISP downtimes) he caused, while also admitting he is likely to have drawn the attention of law enforcement agencies. "There's also only so long that I can keep doing something like this before the government types are able to correlate my likely network routes (I have already been active for far too long to remain safe). For a while now my worst-case scenario hasn't been going to jail, but simply vanishing in the middle of the night as soon as some unpleasant government figures out who I am," the hacker said.
He didn't do it to warn people about a potential threat. He did it to force manufacturers to pay more attention to security. He should be given the key to the fucking city.
No, he bricked broken IOT(S) devices to stop them from attacking others. A bricked device is harmless, and there's even hope it gets returned to manufacturer. On the other hand, one that's part of a blackhat botnet is bad for everyone.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Screw jail. This guy needs to be drawn and quartered.
Nonsense. Having guys like him probing our infrastructure is a lot better than leaving the holes wide open for Putin and Xi Jingping. He is providing a public service. It may not be pleasant when you get pwned, but flu shots aren't pleasant either.
... finally gets a job.
He used publicly known exploits, so if he didn't get there first it was only a matter of time before someone else did.
Since most people wouldn't even know their device was part of a botnet, this is the best outcome. They will return it to the shop as defective or get a software update from the manufacturer.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC