Overview

• Ethan Foltz, 22, was charged in the District of Alaska with aiding and abetting computer intrusions, a count that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years if convicted.
• Agents executed an Aug. 6 search at Foltz’s Eugene residence, terminated the botnet’s attack capability, and transferred administrative control to DCIS, with no Rapper Bot attacks reported since.
• Court filings allege more than 370,000 DDoS attacks from April to early August against about 18,000 unique victims using roughly 65,000–95,000 infected IoT devices.
• Officials say typical attack volumes were 2–3 terabits per second with a peak possibly exceeding 6 Tbps, and alleged targets spanned 80+ countries including a U.S. government network, major tech firms, and a social media platform cited in public reports as X after a March outage.
• Investigators linked the operation to Foltz through PayPal and IP records; in a recorded interview he allegedly said he was the primary administrator and named a partner known as “SlayKings.”