Josiah White, Paras Jha, and Dalton Norman, the three men behind the development and distribution of the Mirai botnet, were recently sentenced to serve five years of probation by a federal judge in Alaska. Based on input from the Justice Department, which recommended a reduced sentence in return for their cooperation with authorities, the three men will also be expected to perform 2,500 hours of community service, which is expected to continue involving working with the FBI on issues related to cybercrime and cybersecurity.
Originally developed to perform DDos attacks on Minecraft servers, the Mirai botnet turned out to be much more potent than expected, at which point the trio expanded their range of targets, and leased the botnet to others. When it became apparent that they were going to become targets of an investigation, they released the code behind it to a hacker forum, allowing other cybercriminals to use and modify the code for their own DDoS attacks. Since being apprehended, the three men have logged about a thousand hours assisting in preventing other DDoS attacks, and developing tools for the FBI to use in tracking private keys for cryptocurrencies.
Source:
https://gizmodo.com/hackers-behind-the-botnet-that-broke-the-internet-are-b-1829171566
