Prosecutors cost man who allegedly used botnet to take down X this spring

An Oregon man has been in a federal criticism as we speak on allegations of working a botnet for rent that carried out cyberattacks starting at the very least in 2021. Ethan Foltz has been accused of working Rapper Bot, often known as Eleven Eleven Botnet and CowBot, and utilizing it to execute coordinated distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults. The criticism claims that Rapper Bot was used to focus on victims in additional than 80 nations, and since April 2025, it has reportedly carried out greater than 370,000 assaults in opposition to 18,000 distinctive victims.

“Rapper Bot was one of the highly effective DDoS botnets to ever exist,” US Legal professional Michael J. Heyman for the District of Alaska mentioned. “Our workplace stays dedicated to disrupting and dismantling cyber criminals that threaten web safety and infrastructure within the District of Alaska and throughout the USA.”

Certainly one of Rapper Bot’s alleged victims was X, which was taken down by a DDoS assault in March. On the time, proprietor Elon Musk made concerning the assault being perpetrated by a “massive, coordinated group and/or a rustic” and that it stemmed from IP addresses in Ukraine, though safety researchers mentioned it was attainable the social community .