New Variants Of Mirai Botnet Detected, Targeting More Iot Devices

Enlarge (credit: BeeBright/Getty Images) Mirai, the “botnet” malware that was responsible for a string of massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in 2016—including one against the website of security reporter Brian Krebs—has gotten a number of recent updates. Now, developers using the widely distributed "open" source code of the original have added a raft of new devices to their potential bot armies by compiling the code for four more microprocessors commonly used in embedded systems. Researchers at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 security research unit have published details of new samples of the Mirai botnet discovered in late February.