3 plead guilty to hand in paralysing internet

ANCHORAGE, AK — Three men, including an Indian American, pleaded guilty to creating a ‘botnet’ known as Mirai that was used to paralyze chunks of the internet in 2016.

Paras Jha, Josiah White and Dalton Norman admitted to one count of conspiracy in plea agreements filed earlier this month. Federal prosecutors in Alaska and New Jersey said on December 13 that the trio created a collection of hundreds of thousands of computers and internet-connected devices–including routers, webcams and other devices–infected with malware that they controlled.

A broad ‘denial-of-service’ attack waged using the Mirai botnet knocked services such as Twitter and Netflix offline in October 2016. Prosecutors said they don’t believe the three men were responsible for that attack, as Jha had already posted the code for Mirai to online criminal forums.

Jha, 21, of Fanwood, New Jersey, and Norman, 21, of Metairie, Louisiana, also pleaded guilty to a separate conspiracy charge for using another powerful botnet for a ‘clickfraud’ scheme, used to artificially generate advertising revenue by making it appear that a real user clicked on an online ad.

Jha, a former Rutgers University computer science student, also pleaded guilty on December 13 in a New Jersey federal court to a computer fraud charge for allegedly executing a series of attacks from 2014 through 2016 that paralyzed the university’s networks.

Bill Walton, a special agent who oversees the Anchorage FBI’s Cyber Crime unit, said the botnet’s name is a reference to a Japanese anime called Mirai Nikki, which loosely translated into English means "future diary."