An In-Depth Analysis of the Mirai Botnet

Multiple news stories, articles, incidents, and attacks have consistently brought to light that IoT devices have a major lack of security. Developing a solution to protect and secure these devices is difficult because of the multitude of devices available on the market, each with their own requirements. This paper will focus on a particularly widespread piece of IoT malware known as the Mirai botnet by examining what its capabilities are, how it spreads to new devices, the impact that it has already had, and propose mitigation solutions to help prevent future attacks.

I. Introduction

On September 20^th, 2016, the website of respected security journalist Brian Krebs was taken offline by one of the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks seen to date. This attack was created by what would later be revealed as the Mirai botnet, and would be the beginning of a chaotic and worrisome era of the Internet.