Widespread DDoS compromise sought by novel Mirai botnet variant

More than 1,300 systems have already been compromised by the Murdoc botnet — a new Mirai variant that targets vulnerable AVTECH IP cameras and Huawei HG532 routers — as part of a widespread distributed denial-of-service attack campaign that has been ongoing since July, reports The Hacker News.

Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam accounted for most of the infections with the botnet, which exploited the CVE-2017-17215 and CVE-2024-7029 vulnerabilities for initial access and the eventual botnet malware retrieval for DDoS intrusions, an analysis from Qualys researchers revealed. Such findings follow Trend Micro's discovery of a major DDoS attack against Japanese entities late last year that involved a botnet consisting of Mirai- and BASHLITE-based variants. "The botnet's commands include those that can incorporate various DDoS attack methods, update malware, and enable proxy services," said Trend Micro. Another Mirai variant dubbed "gayfemboy" was recently reported by Qianxin XLab researchers to have targeted flawed Four-Faith industrial routers.