Kaiji

By GoldSparrow in Botnets

Malware researchers have uncovered a new botnet, which has been dubbed Kaiji. According to experts, the creators of the Kaiji botnet are likely to originate from China. Interestingly enough, the authors of the Kaiji project do not appear to have borrowed any code or features from popular botnets. This is not very common, as operators of botnets often borrow from one another to spare themselves time and effort. To build their creation, the operators of the Kaiji botnet have used the Google Go programming language.

The goal of the Kaiji botnet is to hijack as many IoT (Internet-of-Things) devices as possible. To do this, the creators of the Kaiji botnet have made sure to deploy several different copies of the threat, which would be compatible with several CPU architectures. For now, the Kaiji botnet remains rather small. However, it is likely that the operators of the Kaiji botnet would expand the features and reach of their project in the future. Many operators of botnets rely on known exploits to hijack targeted systems. This is not the case with the Kaiji botnet. The creators of the Kaiji botnet scan the Internet searching for SSH services, which are accessible. Next, the attackers would attempt to brute-force the login credentials needed to access the targeted systems. To compromise the targeted system, the attackers would target the ‘root’ account and use a pre-prepared list of login credentials that are used frequently.

According to malware researchers, the Kaiji botnet does not appear to be a finished project yet, as it tends to malfunction rather frequently. Not only does the C&C (Command & Control) server of the Kaiji botnet crash fairly often, but the payload of the threat has been observed to cause the compromised host to break down. It would appear that the operators of the Kaiji botnet are planning on using it to launch DDoS (Distributed-Denial-of-Service) attacks. However, cybersecurity analysts report that the DDoS modules of the Kaiji botnet are not yet fully developed.

Despite the fact that the Kaiji botnet is not a fully-finished project, it has the potential to become successful. Make sure you protect your IoT devices by updating their firmware regularly and do not forget to use secure login credentials to minimize the chance of falling victim to a botnet.

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