Editing Denial-of-service attack (section)

===Mirai botnet===
The [[Mirai (malware)|Mirai botnet]] works by using a [[computer worm]] to infect hundreds of thousands of IoT devices across the internet. The worm propagates through networks and systems taking control of poorly protected IoT devices such as thermostats, Wi-Fi-enabled clocks, and washing machines.<ref name="Mirai">{{Cite journal |title=DDoS in the IoT: Mirai and Other Botnets |journal=Computer |volume=50 |issue=7 |pages=80–84 |language=en-US |doi=10.1109/MC.2017.201|year=2017 |last1=Kolias |first1=Constantinos |last2=Kambourakis |first2=Georgios |last3=Stavrou |first3=Angelos |last4=Voas |first4=Jeffrey |s2cid=35958086 }}</ref> The owner or user will usually have no immediate indication of when the device becomes infected. The IoT device itself is not the direct target of the attack, it is used as a part of a larger attack.<ref name="Kuzmanovic 75–86">{{Cite book|last1=Kuzmanovic|first1=Aleksandar|last2=Knightly|first2=Edward W.|title=Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications |chapter=Low-rate TCP-targeted denial of service attacks: The shrew vs. The mice and elephants |date=2003-08-25|publisher=ACM|pages=75–86|doi=10.1145/863955.863966|isbn=978-1581137354|citeseerx=10.1.1.307.4107|s2cid=173992197 }}</ref> Once the hacker has enslaved the desired number of devices, they instruct the devices to try to contact an ISP. In October 2016, a Mirai botnet [[DDoS attacks on Dyn|attacked Dyn]] which is the ISP for sites such as [[Twitter]], [[Netflix]], etc.<ref name="Mirai"/> As soon as this occurred, these websites were all unreachable for several hours.