Tag Archives: booter

UK Sets Up Fake Booter Sites To Muddy DDoS Market

March 28, 2023

The United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has been busy setting up phony DDoS-for-hire websites that seek to collect information on users, remind them that launching DDoS attacks is illegal, and generally increase the level of paranoia for people looking to hire such services. 

Six Charged in Mass Takedown of DDoS-for-Hire Sites

December 14, 2022

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) today seized four-dozen domains that sold “booter” or “stresser” services — businesses that make it easy and cheap for even non-technical users to launch powerful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks designed knock targets offline. The DOJ also charged six U.S. men with computer crimes related to their alleged ownership of the popular DDoS-for-hire services.

Trial Ends in Guilty Verdict for DDoS-for-Hire Boss

September 16, 2021

A jury in California today reached a guilty verdict in the trial of Matthew Gatrel, a St. Charles, Ill. man charged in 2018 with operating two online services that allowed paying customers to launch powerful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Internet users and websites. Gatrel’s conviction comes roughly two weeks after his co-conspirator pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to running the services.

Owners of DDoS-for-Hire Service vDOS Get 6 Months Community Service

June 7, 2020

The co-owners of vDOS, a now-defunct service that for four years helped paying customers launch more than two million distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that knocked countless Internet users and websites offline, each have been sentenced to six months of community service by an Israeli court.

Career Choice Tip: Cybercrime is Mostly Boring

May 29, 2020

When law enforcement agencies tout their latest cybercriminal arrest, the defendant is often cast as a bravado outlaw engaged in sophisticated, lucrative, even exciting activity. But new research suggests that as cybercrime has become dominated by pay-for-service offerings, the vast majority of day-to-day activity needed to support these enterprises is in fact mind-numbingly boring and tedious, and that highlighting this reality may be a far more effective way combat cybercrime and steer offenders toward a better path.

UK Ad Campaign Seeks to Deter Cybercrime

May 28, 2020

The United Kingdom’s anti-cybercrime agency is running online ads aimed at young people who search the Web for services that enable computer crimes, specifically trojan horse programs and DDoS-for-hire services. The ad campaign follows a similar initiative launched in late 2017 that academics say measurably dampened demand for such services by explaining that their use to harm others is illegal and can land potential customers in jail.

Booter Boss Busted By Bacon Pizza Buy

February 4, 2020

A Pennsylvania man who operated one of the Internet’s longest-running online attack-for-hire or “booter” services was sentenced to five years probation today. While the young man’s punishment was heavily tempered by his current poor health, the defendant’s dietary choices may have contributed to both his capture and the lenient sentencing: Investigators say the onetime booter boss’s identity became clear after he ordered a bacon and chicken pizza delivered to his home using the same email address he originally used to register his criminal attack service.

Booter Boss Interviewed in 2014 Pleads Guilty

February 28, 2019

A 20-year-old Illinois man has pleaded guilty to running multiple DDoS-for-hire services that launched millions of attacks over several years. The plea deal comes almost exactly five years after KrebsOnSecurity interviewed both the admitted felon and his father and urged the latter to take a more active interest in his son’s online activities.

250 Webstresser Users to Face Legal Action

February 1, 2019

More than 250 customers of a popular and powerful online attack-for-hire service that was dismantled by authorities in 2018 are expected to face legal action for the damage they caused, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency.

In April 2018, investigators in the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands took down attack-for-hire service WebStresser[.]org and arrested its alleged administrators. Prior to the takedown, the service had more than 151,000 registered users and was responsible for launching some four million attacks over three years.

Now, those same authorities are targeting people who paid the service to conduct attacks.