Analysis of Mirai Malware and Its Components

Abstract

Mirai malware is the most famous malware in the field of IoT. It created much destruction around the end of the year 2016. With just a common password vulnerability of IoT devices, it created a large botnet of 600K–700K and was able to launch DDoS attacks that were double and triple the volume of DDoS attacks launched so far. It is implemented in such a beautiful and unsophisticated way that more attacks will be later implemented and appended. Releasing its source code provides a way for the attackers to create its variants and provides researchers with a path in the right direction to tackle upcoming variants of Mirai malware. Although the mechanism of attacks and implementation of Mirai seems easy, its implementation is challenging. The following paper provides a guided way to understand Mirai malware’s functionality and launch it in an isolated environment to do further research on it. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.