Beginner Cybercriminals Sell Botnet Access on Instagram

While most Instagram users share photos of their pets and food, a new wave of beginner cybercriminals is using the platform to sell hacked accounts for Fortnite, Spotify, and other online services, as well as access to botnets for launching DDoS attacks.

Several Instagram pages are advertising botnets and compromised Fortnite player accounts. Some accounts promote botnets based on Mirai, while others offer botnets built on different codebases. “There are a lot of people from the gaming community on Instagram,” one seller told Motherboard via Discord, a popular chat platform among gamers.

Both the “hackers” themselves and their tools are fairly unsophisticated. When asked by journalists where he got his botnet and whether he created it himself, a seller going by the name Root Senpai declined to answer “for security reasons.”

Some tools are advertised in Instagram posts, while others are promoted through the Stories feature. According to Root Senpai, hacked Fortnite accounts are currently in high demand. As the game’s popularity grows, cybercriminals continue to hack player accounts to make in-game purchases and then transfer those items to other accounts.

“Personally, I do this for fun and money, since I’m still too young to have a real job and earn enough,” Root Senpai admitted.