A 22-year-old Eugene man has been accused of developing one of the world’s most powerful hacking networks and renting it out to others to conduct large-scale cyberattacks targeting victims – including Elon Musk’s social media site X -- in more than 80 countries.

Ethan J. Foltz was identified as the administrator of the Rapper Bot that infected digital video recorders, Wi-Fi routers or other computers with malware in the U.S. as well in China, Japan and Ireland, according to a federal complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Alaska.

Rapper Bot clients would then issue commands to the infected devices to send large volumes of traffic to victim computers and servers, prosecutors allege in the complaint.

Such attacks cause companies lost revenue, loss of customers and added expense

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