VERY IMPORTANT

A cross-platform win32-based Mirai spreader and botnet is in the wild and previously discussed publicly. However, there is much information confused together, as if an entirely new IoT bot is spreading to and from Windows devices. This is not the case. Instead, an accurate assessment is that a previously active Windows botnet is spreading a Mirai bot variant. So let’s make a level-headed assessment of what is really out there. The earliest we observed this spreader variant pushing Mirai downloaders was January 2017. But this Windows bot is not new. The Windows bot’s spreading method for Mirai is very limited as well – it only delivers the Mirai bots to a Linux host from a Windows host if it successfully brute forces a remote telnet connection. So we don’t have a sensational hop from Linux Mirai to Windows Mirai just yet, that’s just a silly statement.