Administrators of DDoS-for-hire Service were arrested as a result of a joint Operation Power OFF led by the Dutch police, and UK’s National Crime Agency along with the support of Europol and other law enforcement agencies.
The 6 administrators behind DDoS-for-hire website were located in the United Kingdom, Croatia, Canada, and Serbia. Top users of the marketplace are from Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Croatia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Hong Kong.
DDoS-for-hire Service
It is such a service that attackers have a number of remotely connected bots devices to direct a huge traffic to a website or the online platforms.
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The DDoS-for-hire Service service provider Webstresser[.]org to be considered as the biggest marketplace for the DDOS and it has over 136,000 registered users and they conducted 4 million attacks.European police confirmed that the illegal service was shut down and its infrastructure was seized.
To make these services available users need to pay a nominal fee through online payment gateways or through cryptocurrencies. Registered users could avail this service as low as EUR 15.00 per month and it allows anyone to launch a DDoS attack even with zero technical skills.
“We have a trend where the sophistication of certain professional hackers to provide resources is allowing individuals – and not just experienced ones – to conduct DDoS attacks and other kinds of malicious activities online”, said Steven Wilson, Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).
“International law enforcement will not tolerate these illegal services and will continue to pursue its admins and users. This joint operation is yet another successful example of the ongoing international effort against these destructive cyber attacks” said Jaap van Oss, Dutch Chairman of the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT).
Europol said using stresser or booter services for DDoS attack lead to severe penalties such as prison sentence, a fine or both.
“DDoS attacks are illegal. Many IT enthusiasts get involved in seemingly low-level fringe cybercrime activities, unaware of the consequences that such crimes carry” Europol said.
