A 29-year-old British suspect is accused of being the mastermind behind the massive attack on Deutsche Telekom that hit nearly 1 million routers last November.

Germany's federal criminal police force (BKA) said that the attack was carried out to compromise home routers in order to enlist them in a botnet that he then offered the DDoS service for sale on the dark web.

"From the outset, Deutsche Telekom cooperated with law enforcement agencies," BKA said. "Technical assistance was also provided by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in the analysis of the malicious software used."

Authorities suspect that the Mirai malware was used to scan for IoT devices in order to enlist them into the botnet.

The BKA was brought into the investigation as the attack was considered a threat to the country's national communication infrastructure.

The suspect is still unnamed, but the BKA said it would extradite him to Germany to stand trial for the charge of computer sabotage. If convicted, he can get a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Source: The Hacker News