Overview

• Federal prosecutors in Alaska filed a criminal complaint naming Ethan Foltz, 22, of Eugene, as the alleged operator of Rapper Bot and charged him with aiding and abetting computer intrusions.
• Court filings describe a large IoT botnet of roughly 65,000 to 95,000 infected devices that regularly generated 2–3 Tbps DDoS floods, with a largest attack that may have exceeded 6 Tbps.
• Partner data cited by the complaint attributes more than 370,000 attacks since April 2025 against about 18,000 unique victims across over 80 countries.
• Targets allegedly included a U.S. government network, a popular social media platform, and U.S. tech companies, while Engadget reports the March outage of X was linked to the botnet.
• DCIS obtained administrative control during an Aug. 6 search at Foltz’s residence, private partners report no further Rapper Bot attacks since, and authorities credit Operation PowerOFF and multiple cloud and security firms with assistance.