Researchers accidentally take down DDoS botnet

Researchers have taken down an established DDoS botnet by accident. The security team from Akamai made the breakthrough by mistake when analysing threats, according to a report. Members of the Akamai Security Intelligence Response Team (SIRT) were analysing the KmsdBot malware behind the botnet, which was using infected devices to mine for cryptocurrency and target web servers with DDoS attacks. SIRT were able to study the malware as it had infected one of their honeypot servers. While investigating, SIRT sent commands to the bot to test its capabilities – accidentally creating a syntax error that took the entire botnet offline.