Prosecutors Charge Man Who Allegedly Used Botnet To Take Down X This Spring

An Oregon man has been charged successful a national title coming connected allegations of operating a botnet for prosecute that conducted cyberattacks opening astatine slightest successful 2021. Ethan Foltz has been accused of moving Rapper Bot, besides known arsenic Eleven Eleven Botnet and CowBot, and utilizing it to execute coordinated distributed denial of work (DDoS) attacks. The title claims that Rapper Bot was utilized to target victims successful much than 80 countries, and since April 2025, it has reportedly conducted much than 370,000 attacks against 18,000 unsocial victims.

"Rapper Bot was 1 of nan astir powerful DDoS botnets to ever exist," US Attorney Michael J. Heyman for nan District of Alaska said. "Our agency remains committed to disrupting and dismantling cyber criminals that frighten net information and infrastructure successful nan District of Alaska and crossed nan United States."

One of Rapper Bot's alleged victims was X, which was taken down by a DDoS onslaught successful March. At nan time, proprietor Elon Musk made unsubstantiated claims astir nan onslaught being perpetrated by a "large, coordinated group and/or a country" and that it stemmed from IP addresses successful Ukraine, though information researchers said it was imaginable nan societal web had near servers unsecured.