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

An Oregon man has been in a federal criticism at this time on allegations of working a botnet for rent that performed cyberattacks starting at the very least in 2021. Ethan Foltz has been accused of working Rapper Bot, also referred to 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 international locations, and since April 2025, it has reportedly performed greater than 370,000 assaults towards 18,000 distinctive victims.

“Rapper Bot was some of the highly effective DDoS botnets to ever exist,” US Lawyer 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.”

One in every 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 in regards to 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 potential the social community .