Ethan J. Foltz has been arrested in connection with operating the “Rapper Bot” botnet, which was used for DDoS attacks that knocked Twitter and Twitter-owned Instagram offline for two hours in March.
Foltz reportedly built and operated the botnet with an accomplice, who went by the name “Slaykings”, and they shared the profits equally.
The pair are said to have deliberately kept the botnet’s size “Goldilocks” sized so as to avoid detection, rent it out to extortionists, notably those targeting gambling sites based in China, and also made sure their botnet wasn’t pointed at the blog of journalist Brian Krebs, as they knew that would bring the authorities down on them.
Prior to his arrest, Foltz revealed that he’d found a new vulnerability which could give them control of 32,000 new devices.