Young Hackers Help FBI to Avoid Jail

Three twenty-something hackers were nabbed for creating and spreading the notorious Mirai botnet, a sophisticated piece of IoT malware. Mirai was originally designed to hack the popular video game, Minecraft, but when the source code was released in the wild, it didn’t take long for serious bad actors to get a hold of it and put it to use on much more nefarious hacks. In a Mr. Robot-style twist, rather than face serious jail time, the young hackers agreed to help the FBI investigate and neutralize other complex cybercrime cases. And it worked. The trio were credited, in part, for the 2017 takedown of the dangerous Kelihos botnet. The case of the Mirai Three demonstrates the government’s commitment to “hold criminals accountable while encouraging offenders to choose a different path to apply their skills.”