FBI seizes 15 DDoS-for-hire websites

[Guest]

Recently, the FBI has seized 15 domains that were used to initiate DDoS attacks against other services.

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Prosecutors have charged three men, Matthew Gatrel and Juan Martinez in California and David Bukoski in Alaska, with operating the sites, according to affidavits filed in three U.S. federal courts, which were unsealed Thursday.

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“DDoS for hire services such as these pose a significant national threat,” U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder said in a statement. “Coordinated investigations and prosecutions such as these demonstrate the importance of cross-District collaboration and coordination with public sector partners.”

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Besides the seizures of 15 booter services, the FBI has also filed criminal complaints against two alleged cybercriminals—Matthew Gatrel, 30, and Juan Martinez, 25—who were allegedly affiliated with the DDoS-for-hire services known as 'Downthem' and 'Ampnode.'

Between October 2014 and November 2018, Downthem had more than 2000 customer subscriptions and had been used to "conduct, or attempt to conduct, over 200,000 DDoS attacks," according to the FBI.

Sources: TechCrunch, The Hacker News

 

Good to hear that action has been taken against all of these "booters", hopefully this year's Christmas proves to be safer for folks who sit on the 'net all the time.  

[PlayStation 2]

 

[poochyena]

This is great! I remember an MMO I use to play would get DDoS'd frequently. It was completely unplayable for 2 or 3 days straight because of it

[XR6]

Good. What type of script kiddie uses DDoS anyway? Sure it'll bring down some 8 year old kid on xbox who keeps saying "ur mum gay lol" but it won't bring down much more than that.

These sort of DDoS for hire companies are just an easy way to make money. I'm surprised there's not more of them around.

 

[XR6]

Just now, James Evens said:

500 gbps is not a joke. 

I didn't actually realise it was 500Gbps, that could cause some serious downtime.

Like you said, it isn't a joke.

Good job to the authorities who took it down.

[schwellmo92]

8 hours ago, 1kv said:

Good. What type of script kiddie uses DDoS anyway? Sure it'll bring down some 8 year old kid on xbox who keeps saying "ur mum gay lol" but it won't bring down much more than that.

These sort of DDoS for hire companies are just an easy way to make money. I'm surprised there's not more of them around.

 

Generally it’s done on competitive games to get an advantage over your opponent. Some games if you’re losing you can DDoS the server and if the server goes offline it doesn’t count as a win or loss for either party, some games the opponent you verse loses their items or stakes you, etc.