Since at least 2021, the federal government says, the "Rapper Bot" DDoS-for-hire botnet launched "large-scale cyber attacks." Now, an Oregon man—Ethan Foltz, 22—has been accused of being behind the powerful botnet. How powerful and destructive was it?

According to the criminal complaint, just between April 2025 and today, Rapper Bot was used in 370,000 attacks against 18,000 victims, located in 80 countries around the world. US

The control panel for the Rapper Bot botnet greets users with the message “Welcome to the Ball Pit, Now with refrigerator support,” an apparent reference to a handful of IoT-enabled refrigerators that were enslaved in their DDoS botnet.